FRES Weekly (03.11.2018)
Recently on Twitter, a golden “F” came to public attention. The account attracted 16,000 followers in 24 hours and one of its tweets was retweeted for nearly 9,000 times. Who generated such traffic?
The past week witnessed a number of more exciting news. The project is now officially supported by renowned collectors and blue-chip artists from the United States, Switzerland, China, Germany, and UAE, openly acclaimed by founder of Ethereum and director of Bitcoin foundation, and maintaining its record at the top of the art category on all ICO review websites.
This fabulous “F” is for FRESCO, the world’s first blockchain art trust distribution network.
How is FRESCO gaining recognition?
In the art industry, FRESCO is expanding its world-class advisory team: Sylvain Levy, the top French collector who holds the DSL Collection, the largest collection of contemporary Chinese art, joined the FRESCO team as the chief art advisor; We also welcomed Joseph Scheer, founder of Institute of Electronic Arts at Alfred University, Benjamin Herndon, professor at Rhode Island School of Design, Ho Jae Kim, New Museum’s star artist, Afra al Dhaheri, Abu Dhabi-based artist as art advisors.
In the blockchain industry, Bitcoin Foundation director Brock Pierce retweeted FRESCO on Twitter and commented that “It will be revolutionized for the benefits of artists.” Charles Hoskinson, one of the founders of Ethereum and chairman of IOHK, also retweeted FRESCO and saying he “would love to see more innovations in the art industry.” Moreover, Dr. Jin Di, a computer science expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is now on board as technical advisor and will be responsible for supervising the technical team.
In the financial industry, Wendy Li, managing director of China Renaissance, joined as financial advisor. She will advise on the financial issues based on her 10 years of experience in investment and art collection.
Who are behind FRESCO?
FRESCO, the world’s first ecosystem serving art collectors, practitioners, and institutions, breaks the boundaries of technology, finance, and art.
FRESCO’s operational and advisory team combines solid expertise and exclusive resources. The team is composed of top talents from the blockchain industry and world-renowned artists, collectors, curators, and scholars. Its technical team has extensive experience in developing blockchain projects, with educational backgrounds from top institutions in the realm of science and engineering.
The art world has always been lagged behind in terms of technological innovations.
Now is the time for FRESCO to change the game.
1. What is FRESCO?
FRESCO is the world’s first blockchain art trust value distribution network. Through blockchain technology, FRESCO enables artists, investors, dealers, galleries, and administrators around the world to demonstrate their artworks and evaluate collection strength, eventually creating an efficient and intuitive art value measurement system. FRES tokens represent the level of trust distributed to each artwork.
Why does the art market need to be revolutionized by blockchain technology?
According to the statistics of the art industry in 2017, the art industry currently sees a total global market value of US$45 billion. Despite the potential expanding size of art market, it still is relatively complex to buy, sell and evaluate artworks. Barriers to entering into the art world include knowledge of the artwork, a cultivated aesthetic to appreciate and identify artworks’ value, ability to store and maintain artworks in the long term, a track record as a reputable collector, and, even then, there is no guarantee of profitability. When you walk in a gallery and see a $10,000 painting, you cannot objectively justify the price tag from another $100 artwork.
In addition to the collectors’ evaluation of the artwork, gallerists face the redundant and arduous process of verifying whether a new potential collector is truly well- financed to take home a prestige piece such as a Warhol or Pollock.
Museums, now competing on a global stage for donors and collection strength, also lack a universally accepted methodology for valuing their collections — both in terms of dollars and prestige.
Finally, as perhaps an important part of art industry, artists are restricted by the fact that in order to exhibit and sell their works, they have to sign under galleries to sell. This means emerging or freelance artists, who may have established their studios under institutional sponsorship or when they can finance themselves, have fewer chance of exposure in the market.
In today’s art world, information is still controlled by a few people in the industry, increasing the barriers to entry for collectors and investors.
A solution is needed: a decentralized way for art market participants to evaluate the strengths of each other’s art collections and transparently communicate the value of artworks.
What problems does FRESCO specifically solve?
FRESCO, as a revolutionary network for the assignment of works of art and information sharing, will reshape an ecosystem of decentralized art trade. At the same time, compared with the operation mode of the traditional art auction and auction market, all the artwork transaction records on the FRESCO network are clearly identifiable. Under the premise of ensuring the anonymity, transparency and, circulation, the works identification and copyright confirmation are subtly solved information asymmetry and other issues.
2. How does FRESCO work?
In order to establish a quantifiable ecosystem for the assignment of works of art and information sharing, FRESCO pioneers a trust distribution mechanism for tokens. FRESCO’s trust token allocation mechanism will create an effective contractual mechanism between art participants and their collections.
FRESCO token holders will have the priority to assign trust tokens to their own artwork or collection after the FRESCO platform goes online. The number of FRES Cash held by them will be the amount of trust value that he/she can distribute, and the number of tokens included in a single artwork will present as FRES Trust of the collection. In the future, the decentralized FRES trust index will be the only reliable measure of the potential value of works of art.
How to understand the FRES trust?
The FRES trust reflects the total value of the trust given to an artwork by its owner. The FRES trust assigned by the user to each art collection is irreversible and anonymous. The accumulation process of the FRES index will add a unique layer of trust based on the value of the artwork.
3. How does the FRESCO trust value accumulate?
Before Fresco was born, the factors for assessing art were complex and varied, subject to subjectivity and uncertainty. The FRES index embodies the influence of these complex factors on the market and artistic ecology, and it simply reflects this process as the distribution of FRES Cash holders to the work.
There are two types of transaction records between users generated on the FRESCO platform:
FRES Cash Transaction: Transaction history of FRES Cash.
FRES Art Transaction: Transaction history of artworks and attached FRES Trust.
Artwork entering the FRESCO network has been traded several times with the distribution of FRES Cash, and its trust value will gradually increase, resulting in more powerful appreciation potential and market support. In the FRESCO network, art participants can allocate a fixed amount of FRES Cash to each artwork they own. Based on the FRESCO Protocol technology, participants can keep a record of the trust value of the collection on the blockchain.
The accumulation of FRES Trust is irrevocable, and its appearance will add a unique value chain of trust to the artwork. In the future, the decentralized FRES Trust will be the only reliable indicator of the potential value of an art collection.
FRESCO is led by a global team of top talents and senior members from the art and technology industries. Team members come from a variety of backgrounds, insightful and innovative, academically learned and practically trained.
The project is technically feasible and ready, as it is based on Ethereum, the second generation of blockchain technology.
Whereas a number of art-blockchain projects focus on the generally acknowledged issues such as the authentication of artworks, FRESCO targets at something different.
By combining a radically fresh concept with a solid technology, FRESCO will surely set off a profound revolution in the art world.
