London Ethereum Upgrade went buttery smooth, and we are now burning ETH, baby! Yes, there was no other way than to record this historic crypto event. Let's take a deep dive into the details of this week's cover art and see what secrets we have hidden.

I got this idea during my short vacation. I needed something very specific for London and was looking for some good "chain" analogy. Actually, the train suits it well. So I did use Londons Tube forked train to symbolize the event.

I remembered this station (Notting Hill Gate) from my 2nd London visit, and you can see the photogenic location that inspired the illustration.

The ETH crystal logo sits dominantly over the station and is backed by two London landmarks: The Gherkin, the Dildo-shaped building, and the London Eye Wheel.

Now, let's observe the weird train. The forked car #12965000 (number of the forked block) is driven by Vitalik himself conducted by a fork. You can read the led panel as EIP-1559, and the same code is hidden on the subway sleepers. "Burn baby, burn," and the little flame logo reminds us of new Ethereum burn mechanics. The redundant left car is at its terminus station and no longer will serve.

I haven't spent much time elaborating on the perfect station name. I needed something short with "Fork" in it. Other issue articles are painted on the wall as references; for instance, you can recognize an XCOPY piece. Finally, I smuggled in our popular gen art vending machine by Art Blocks from issue 44. There is also one micro detail; all the people waiting to get onboard have tiny "TX" letters on their clothes.

This piece is drawn in Procreate on an iPad, and you can watch the full process, including all sketches. The animation is very subtle as the time was running out. The drawing took around 14 hours with 14441 brush strokes. Add another 3 hours of post-production plus music & sound mixing.