Blockchain, Creativity and Arts Intertwine: Use Cases and Notable Projects
Blockchain technology and arts act jointly towards the realization of human ideals, and stand to bring radical structural change to the world, beginning with the financial system and modern creative industries. Both have a positive influence, and play a significant role in cultural and civic engagement. Nowadays, blockchain projects creators find inspiration in arts and use blockchain technology to revolutionize its creation, distribution, and perception. Many new projects appear in 2020. The blockchain still dominates public debates in the art community. The main discussions are about the benefits of blockchain technology which enables new levels of transparency on an artwork’s history, as well as irrefutable proof of ownership. Blockchain is to make art objects more accessible while changing methods and approaches used in the arts industry. This will give new stirring opportunities for collectors, art galleries, and artists.
Art Market Overview
The global art market reached in 2018 the second highest level in 10 years. On top of that, according to the definitive analysis of key trends in the international art market in a freshly-published Art Market 2020, produced by Art Basel and UBS, over the last year, sales in the art market were partly driven by sales made online and through blockchain technology. Online sales of art were estimated at $5.9 billion, a decline of 2% year-on-year, although still at their second highest ever level.
The report covers all aspects of the market and highlights the most important developments of the past year.
The key findings are as follows:
- Global sales of art and antiques reached an estimated $64.1 billion, down 5% year-on-year, returning the market to just above its 2017 level.
- Millennial collectors lead art market sales, spending six times more than boomers, while female collectors spend more than men.
- The three major art hubs, the US, the UK, and China, continued to account for a majority of the value of global sales in 2019. The US market was the largest market worldwide once again, accounting for 44% of global sales by value.
- Sales in the gallery and dealer sector were estimated to have reached $36.8 billion in 2019, growing just over 2% year-on-year.
- Sales at public auction of fine and decorative art and antiques reached $24.2 billion in 2019, down 17% year-on-year as values decreased in the key global auction hubs.
- Art fair sales were estimated to have reached $16.6 billion in 2019. The share of dealers’ annual sales by value made at art fairs has grown from less than 30% in 2010 to 45% in 2019.
For more precise information check out UBS Art Basel Art Market Report 2019/2020 here:
Use Cases
Democratizing Art Investment
When Jean-Michel Basquiat’s painting ‘Untitled’ was purchased in 1984, the price tag was $20,900, and when it was sold again in 2017, the owner fetched $110.5 million. That’s quite a return for 33 years of investment in a single painting, and while this is obviously one of the more extreme examples of contemporary art’s appreciative value, it is indicative of the industry trends.
Even though online art sales grew, fewer people actually bought art online. The art sales industry has often been considered the domain of the ultra-rich, and for good reason. But by tokenizing art and making it available for purchase in segments, many hope to open the doors of investment to art lovers and shrewd investors who don’t have access to huge capital. Employing micropayments via blockchain smart contracts to allow more investors the opportunity to invest in a work of art could ultimately raise the price of expensive works. The demand for first-class work will continue, and those who are able to own them outright will always be permitted to do so. Paintings that are more difficult to sell to a single buyer are the prime targets of such a democratized system, by which purchasers could own a percentage of the work with the hope that its value will be appreciated.
Decentralizing Art Exchanges
Some see it as a matter of time until the majority of traditional auction houses resort to selling works online — and many already have. Meanwhile, decentralized art marketplaces built on blockchain continue to emerge and increase confidence in online art sales platforms as a mediator. Their spread is one of the key factors which has led to the upward trends in global online art sales as they were estimated to $5.9 billion in 2020 and are forecast to increase to a total of $9.32 billion by 2024.
More art-specialized blockchain-enabled sales platforms continue to reduce the overhead associated with maintaining a physical gallery. Some of the projects trying to solve these problems, for instance, the Blockchain Art Exchange (BAE), and DADA, an Ethereum based decentralized gallery, helps users collect art with crypto.
Monetizing Digital Art
Blockchain-based platforms that have emerged have served to lay out a blueprint for how digital works — whether in the form of video, illustration, text-graphic, or otherwise — can be monetized. First, artists upload their content. Then curators can pay for that content, with the artists receiving a commission in the form of digital currency. Creators can use the currency they receive how they please, including “buying” preferential space in the marketplace in order to increase the number of eyeballs that are directed to their works. Currently, plenty of blockchain projects allows digital creators to reap financial reward from their work, while consumers can pay a reasonable sum to download and share content that speaks to them.
Crypto Collectibles
Crypto collectibles are designed in most cases to be bought, sold, and traded as one would with a baseball card. They are tied to unique identifiers, which makes them scarce and feeds into the entertainment value associated with purchasing and swapping them — they are truly one of a kind, or at least limited to a defined number.
A crypto-collectible is a cryptographically unique, non-fungible digital asset. Unlike cryptocurrencies, which require all tokens to be identical, each crypto-collectible token is unique or limited in quantity.
There are a bunch of fascinating and successful projects. For example, CryptoKitties — first mover collectible cats on Ethereum, which launched in 2017. It seized everyone’s imagination and millions of dollars while almost bringing down the Ethereum blockchain in the process. This Spring, Dapper Labs, the developers behind CryptoKitties, launched Flow Playground — an interface that lets developers experiment with creating NFTs and smart contract’s Dapper Labs’ Flow blockchain. Previously, Dapper Labs announced a partnership with the UFC that will see a blockchain game featuring tokenized representations of mixed martial arts fights that can be trained and leveled up.
Ethereum-based sports tokenization venture Chiliz and MLB — crypto collectible baseball cards are other popular examples of how crypto collectibles can be creatively leveraged to attain higher sales prices and keep users interested. Autoglyphs from Larve Labs were the first on-chain generative art on the Ethereum blockchain, completely self-contained mechanism for the creation and ownership of an artwork. On Clovers Network website you can discover, collect and trade cryptographic icons. Check out Aavegotchi, a gamified DeFi-NFT meld powered by Aave. At the end of August, Meme Protocol was announced, now instead of farming for yield, DeFi users stake assets to earn limited edition NFT memes from some of the top artists in Ethereum.
There are also such marvelous projects as OpenSea — the largest marketplace for user-owned digital goods, which include collectibles, digital art, and other assets backed by a blockchain, where you can manage it.
Needless to say, the NFT ecosystem has gained momentum recently. Fun fact, a few months ago, someone minted a Doge-themed crypto token worth $129,000, backed by 1.15 million Enjin tokens (ENJ) that pays homage to the Doge meme and is now the most valuable ERC-1155 token in existence. Despite the fact that the ecosystem is just beginning to take shape it is already booming.
Keeping Digital Art Scarce
In 2020 digital art continues to occupy an increasingly notable place in the art world. Plenty of examples illustrates the viability of digital art in all its forms, even in forms that have yet to be discovered. A series of works by David Hockney titled ‘The Arrival of Spring’, drawn on an iPad, which were downloaded, transferred to aluminum pallets and valued at $28,000 each; when Corey Arcangel used a modified video game chip to create a moving projected artwork called ‘Super Mario Clouds’, he probably didn’t expect it to end up privately sold for $200,000. These are just a couple of examples of which are countless.
Crypto collectibles manifest themselves as digital artworks built on blockchain. They can be bought, sold and traded, but due to their unique identifiers, they cannot be replicated.
Crypto art projects such as Cryptokitties, CryptoPunks (example of a later iteration, broader crypto collectible network), and Verisart (using blockchain to authenticate and own works of art) have demonstrated the potential of blockchain to sustain a genuine scarcity of digital art in an era when the Internet made scarcity nearly impossible for most things. And this plan of using blockchain technology and unique digital codes to ensure that art is one of a kind could be the ideal security base for increasing the popularity of digital art.
Artwork Ownership Provenance and Authentication
Guaranteeing the chain of ownership for a given work of art goes a long way toward establishing that it is not imaginary. Such a system would have come in handy for the many victims of Wolfgang Beltracchi, who referred to by at least one outlet as the “forger of the century,” is seen in some circles as a genius, in some as a criminal, and in many as a bit of both. He’s made millions peddling some of the most convincing fakes ever to hit the market, and has revelled in visiting the likes of the MoMA and seeing one of his works, signed with the name of the artist he so convincingly imitated. He is the ultimate reminder that systems of provenance in the art sales industry remain wanting.
Provenance travels closely with authenticity. Where provenance describes the chain of ownership, authentication proves the correct authorship. Authentication of art occurs through various methods, including personal expertise, scientific analysis, and certificate of authenticity. Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ exemplifies authentication by an expert. Had renowned Leonardo scholar Martin Kemp not concluded that the work was a real da Vinci, and had the work not, on that recommendation, been included in a 2011 exhibition of Leonardo’s work at the National Gallery in London, it is unlikely that the painting would have sold for $430 million at auction Christie’s New York in November 2017. The authenticity has been subsequently contested.
Crucially, the blockchain records can function not only as a seal of approval but as a trusted library of source material. The blockchain record does not have to be determinative automatically but it can certify the information being vetted by human experts.
Pioneers for the provenance and authentication use case have sought to establish a platform connecting artists, painting owners, galleries, auction houses, transporters, and anybody else involved in the transfer of a given work from one owner to the next. The ability to guarantee that a work has traveled from the original artist through the hands of verified owners drastically reduces the possibility for fakes to enter the marketplace. This way, Deloitte has developed a proof of concept blockchain to solve issues with art traceability. Verisart, Artory, and Codex protocol all have the challenge of managing the “blockchain air gap,” between the blockchain listing and the physical artwork
Fair Blockchain Auction Houses
Art auctions are a complex phenomena, and the major players serving as intermediary points of contact between sellers and buyers are tasked with handling lots that routinely fetch millions of dollars, and there is no margin for error when it comes to authenticating a work and its chain of ownership.
Christie’s happens to be one of the leaders pioneering the intersection between blockchain and art auctioneering, it represents the first of the major auction houses to begin storing its sales and ownership records on a blockchain ledger to augment their systems of provenance and secure their sales data. In November 2018, Christie’s made history with its piloting of a blockchain-based service of art encryption and registration. This activity was done in New York during the auction of the collection of Barney A. Ebsworth. The auction house worked with Artory, an art registry service, to produce the digital certificate for the $300 million art sale. This art sale included the works of Georgia O’Keeffe and Edward Hopper.
As we see, information including the title of the work, description, creation and sale dates, and more can be logged into a blockchain ledger for safekeeping and indisputable proof of ownership transfer. In the future, there also lies an opportunity for sales to be conducted via blockchain platforms, with smart contracts facilitating both payment and rights transfers.
Creating Autonomous Works of Art
The blockchain is emerging as a means for next-level exploration of the instincts that made video games like The Sims and the Tamagotchi such a rousing success at the end of the century. Autonomous works of art exist in the digital world as a software built upon a blockchain-based network, and also as a physical form sculpted by artists funded through blockchain-facilitated contributions to enhance the sculpture. Additionally, hobbyists interested in the development of technologically-augmented ecosystems can attain a sense of ownership by contributing to their development. Algorithms on the blockchain help facilitate both the development and continued functioning of these projects, such that those who contribute may get a sense of life-giving as their pet projects come alive. For example, Plantoid project seeks funding from people familiar with their existence and powers itself with solar energy.
So without further ado, let’s now see more precisely what blockchain projects are trying to solve the aforementioned problems.
State of the Arts:
Verisart — Certify and verify artwork instantly
“Our mission is to build trust and advance cultures by empowering people to secure objects of value and transact with confidence. Before founding Verisart, it was clear to me how widespread fraud was in the physical art business and how untrustworthy many of the parties were. I realised that image recognition, blockchain and museum-grade certification standards could be leveraged to change this — so this is what Verisart has set out to do! Through registering and tracking collectibles and artworks, authentic and fake artworks can be easily identified.”
Based in Los Angeles, Verisart was founded in 2015 by a phenomenal group of leaders within digital media, contemporary art and distributed ledger technology. The CTO and co-founder is Adam Dinwiddie, former CTO of Collectrium, the leading collection management platform for high-value fine art and collectibles, but also Head of Product & Design for Paddle8, the prominent online auction house and marketplace. Joined as the Head of Artist Relations and co-founder is Bradford Schlei, Yale Law School graduate with extensive experience in forging new models across film, finance and art. Peter Todd, a core developer for the Bitcoin Blockchain protocol is a Board Adviser and provides guidance on security and decentralization.
Finally, there’s the CEO and co-founder, Robert Norton, an Internet media executive and formerly CEO of art e-commerce sites such as Saatchi Online and co-founder of Sedition Art, a groundbreaking online platform for collecting digital art, supported by many renowned contemporary artists. In an exclusive interview for Widewalls, as part of our Interview series, Robert Norton talked to us in detail about the journey he just embarked on: the importance of ownership and copyright, the way the Verisart service works and just what it offers to artists, how it will benefit collectors and other art professionals, and much more.
In 2015, Verisart was the first company to apply blockchain technology to the physical art and collectibles market. It’s also working with some of the world’s best-known artists, including Ai Weiwei and Shepard Fairey to certify their works of art. In 2018, Verisart won the “Hottest Blockchain DApp” award at The Europas, the European tech startup awards. It’s also been the first blockchain certification provider on Shopify to offer digital certification for limited editions, artworks and collectibles. Moreover, in 2019 Verisart has aised $2.5 million in seed funding in seed financing in a round led by Galaxy Digital EOS VC Fund. Further investment has come from existing investors Sinai Ventures and Rhodium. The platform is growing fast, hiring equally as fast, and radically disrupting the art industry.
Verisart applies blockchain technology to combine transparency, anonymity and security to protect your records of creation and ownership.
Aiming to become a universal digital database, Verisart is taking on the great challenge to digitize and verify every physical work of art ever made, by enabling artists to create permanent and unassailable certificates of authenticity for their own creations. In order to put together a permanent archive of artist-created certificates, Verisart is using a distributed, decentralized database provided by Bitcoin blockchain. Functioning as a digital ledger, the blockchain maintains a continuously-growing list of records, each existing as a unique, irrefutable, timestamped item.
Verisart has its product in form of a free app, designed specifically for artists and collectors to generate certificates of authenticity for their works in two easy steps. Available for download via iTunes, the Verisart app also lets its clients check provenance securely and in real time, provides a trustworthy platform for inventory management and protects their identity. This way, artists and collectors can keep track of their works anytime, while also being able to check the legitimacy of other works in the database.
Recently, a new online art shop, Vide Atelier, supported by Fair Trade Art certification has launched in response to the devastating effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on artists’ livelihoods and income. Supported by Verisart, DACS, and Marcel for Art, all limited edition prints sold will return all profits to participants, with zero (0%) commission deducted. The first 25 artists include Mark Titchner,Duggie Fields, Faisal Abdu’allah, Penny Slinger, Sarah Staton, Derek Boshier, Ori Gersht, Gideon Rubin, Franklyn Rodgers and more. Each edition will be certified using Verisart’s Fair Trade Art certificates giving buyers trusted provenance information and artists assurance and transparency about each sale. Every transaction is recorded permanently with blockchain technology.
The platform seems quite promising.
To be up to date, check out Verisart Twitter page, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram.
Artory — The leading art and objects registry
“Artory is a secure, digital registry of verified information about artworks and their history — a trusted, neutral resource bringing a new level of confidence to the art market. The Artory registry uses the blockchain to secure the data and is built to the same security standards as the banking industry… Artory is offering a technological solution that will help insulate the traditional marketplace from disruptive threats and provide a platform for future growth. The Artory registry offers market leaders the opportunity to move towards self-regulation — a far preferable solution to the realistic prospect of being bound by restrictive government rules.”
Artory was founded in late 2016 to accumulate trusted data about artworks and collectibles and secure this information. The Artory Registry launched in 2018 by immutably recording artworks on the blockchain.
By giving the art world access to encrypted, blockchain technology, Artory protects and grows the prosperity and enjoyment of those who buy, own, and sell art. Collectors are invited to confidentially register their artworks for digital signature by vetted art institutions, thus becoming part of the art community with enhanced knowledge and confidence. Registered provenance and object information are then uploaded to our public ledger, enabling Artory to usher in a new era of transparency and credibility for the art market. With a commitment to privacy and confidentiality, however, Artory never knows or publishes identifying or sensitive information about Collectors. With teams in New York, Berlin, and Bangkok, Artory has an international presence as a neutral and trusted resource for the art market.
Artory partnered with Christie’s to register each piece of art sold from the $323M Barney A. Ebsworth collection on the Artory Registry. Christie’s was the first auction house to record an auction on the blockchain. In 2019, Artory launched a partnership with Winston Art Group–the world’s leading appraisal firm–to register artworks for individual Collectors, giving artwork owners simple and undemanding access to blockchain technology for the first time. Artory’s database, which contains over 30 million transaction records from auction houses across the globe, is also an integral part of the annual Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report published by renowned economist Dr. Clare McAndrew.
Artory closed a $8.4M Series A funding round in 2019, with investors including Hasso Plattner Capital and 2020 Ventures, which holds stakes in companies such as Spotify, 1st Dibs, and The RealReal.
For its fourth edition, the annual Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report 2020 has once again partnered with Artory to give the art world its first comprehensive look at the art market’s performance over the past year.
What’s more, Artory featured in the 2020 TEFAF Report to discuss blockchain and art patronage as well as it was featured in the recent article “Restarting the Art Market“, published by Barron’s. In the article, Abby Schutz describes the unique aspects of the art market and how they’ve been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Check out Artory blog. Follow the project on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.
DADA — Living art
“DADA is a platform where people speak to each other through drawings and create collaborative art. Anyone can join. For us, anyone can be an artist; there is no good or bad art, it’s all about self-expression and collaboration… We are using blockchain technology to create an economy within our community. Right now we are selling limited edition “Rare Digital Art” created on DADA with IP protection and proof of ownership. Soon we will issue our own currency and creators will be able to earn DADA tokens for drawing, curating and contributing value to the community.”
- Beatriz Ramos, artist, entrepreneur, film director, producer, illustrator & founder of DADA
Founded in 2012 Brooklyn-based DADA is a social network for art enthusiasts to connect with each other. Artists who use DADA are encouraged to collaborate with others in bringing a creation to life, and when the work becomes reality, the platform serves as a blockchain-powered marketplace where artists can sell their works using smart contracts. Collectors receive proof of ownership for the work upon purchase.
Check out DADA freshly-published whitepaper here. The team presented the full paper at the Radical X Change this summer.
It consist of a few separate thorough pieces, which are as follows:
- The Invisible Economy
- Incentive Framework
- Basic Income
- Validation
- Autonomy
- Self-Expression
- The Greater Good
- Creative Collaboration
- Interdependence
- The Commons
- Art As Currency
In brief, the Invisible Economy is the radical separation of art and the market. Blockchain technology allows the economy to be both invisible and transparent. It is invisible because it separates artmaking, code writing, art collecting, and general contributions from market transactions through different mechanisms. And it is transparent because all the transactions take place on the Ethereum blockchain where everyone can track them.
Blockchain allows peer-to-peer networks to launch their own currency, and to control and self-manage the value they create collectively without a central authority. The Invisible Economy organizes economic activity based on interdependence, creativity, and altruism. It leverages the wisdom of the crowd without the pernicious effects of the market. Ultimately, people are rewarded for their contributions with a basic income.
DADA is an online platform where people around the world create spontaneous visual conversations together, in spite of language, distance, nationality, or other artificial boundaries. On DADA, art is a means of communication, and its creative and collaborative nature fosters strong bonds between people. It’s a free and liberating experience. Trolling and bullying are organically neutralized. It is a place where strangers make art together without expecting remuneration, motivated not by extrinsic rewards like money or status but by intrinsic rewards such as the joy of making art, and a sense of autonomy, validation, self-development, belonging and a higher purpose.
The team believes that DADA can be self-sustaining without relying on donations or traditional business models. But in order to preserve people’s intrinsic motivations and the collective social norms that make it such a creative place, the economy must be invisible. In practice, this means that there won’t be a shopping cart icon above each drawing or a leaderboard with the top-selling artists. Artists won’t get to decide a price for their art, bidders won’t compete against each other, bids and purchase prices will be only visible to the person who decides them, and there will never be a direct correlation between the art the artists make and the basic income they receive. Paradoxically, giving up these individual decisions will give people true autonomy.
DADA is a platform with a unique value proposition, a passionate community, and the largest collection of rare digital art in the world — 120,000 digital artworks ready to be traded as NFTs, created by DADA community with DADA tools. The team believes in the free use of art, but not if people profit from an artists’ work without remuneration.
Since these digital artworks are created with their tools, the team will build new for the use, remix, animation, musicalization or adding text on top of any digital artwork in DADA platform. Each new iteration will be an NFT, allowing to track every contribution, paving the way for exponential co-creation, and for art to evolve in unexpected ways.
The DADA token, their new currency, is backed by DADA art collection, and the Invisible Economy uses tokenized drawings (NFTs) as the medium of exchange.
DADA collection of rare digital art on the blockchain:
- 121,302 Drawings
- 187 Collectors
- 19.96 ETH Market cap
Furthermore, DADA.art has a lot of collaborations with people from the art world. For instance, the team is collaborating with artist and roboticist Alexander Reben. Together they created a GAN (a Generative Adversarial Network) that learns how to draw from their data set of over 115,000 drawings. They call it the DADAGAN. According to Wikipedia, a GAN is “a class of machine learning systems invented by Ian Goodfellow and his colleagues in 2014. Two neural networks contest with each other in a game… Given a training set, this technique learns to generate new data with the same statistics as the training set.”
This is a sample of the first batch of drawings generated by DADAGAN:
DADA introduced DADAGAN in late 2019 at their live interactive performance at Tate Modern, thanks to their friends from MoCDA, the Museum of Contemporary Digital Art.
DADAGAN generated the first drawing of Screens: An Exploration, the collaborative visual conversation they were creating for the event. Read more on DADAGAN here.
Last month, the DADA team created a simple survey How Artists Feel About Record-Breaking Sales in the Crypto Art Market to ask artists how they feel about the recent record-breaking sale of a transparent pixel for $15,000. This was in the context of the team’s opinion piece The Complacency Of Crypto Art, in which they argued that the crypto art ecosystem claims to be disrupting the conventional art market while in reality, it is mostly replicating its same free-market, speculative, scarcity-driven dynamics. As a result, there has been a lot of healthy debate on social media with people arguing whether the pixel is art, whether it’s worth the price, whether it’s good or bad art, or whether such sales are good or bad for the ecosystem. They made a list of 11 feelings and respondents could also add their own. Check out the results here.
Read DADA blog here. Follow DADA on Twitter.
SuperRare — Authentic digital art marketplace
“SuperRare is a registration tool and social network for digital art. Artists can create one of a kind digital artworks. They do this by issuing an Ethereum token. You can this about this token like a digital canvas. Collectors on the platform can follow artists they like and purchase digital works from them. In addition to revenue from the first sale of artworks, the original creator of an artwork collects a percentage of secondary market sales, when a collector resells artworks to other collectors. This is all coded into our smart contracts at the core of SuperRare.”
SuperRare is a social platform that encourages the creation and collection of Crypto Art.
The project was founded in 2017 by John Crain, Charles Crain, and Johnathan Perkins–the CEO, CTO, and CPO. They are also the founders of Pixura, the company building the crypto collectible technology running SuperRare. SuperRare has worked with artists since its conception and makes a point of listening to the artist and collector’s needs. On the platform rare digital artworks are sold using Ethereum and are also available to trade. Artists can upload works onto the platform for free, when they do a SuperRare smart contacts and deposits into their Ethereum wallet, the token is then permanently linked to the artwork. SuperRare users can go onto buy, sell or trade works on the platform.
In SuperRare’s first year, the marketplace did $91,000 of sales volume. Two years later, at the close of the second year, the marketplace was consistently averaging over $100,000 per month, with a record high monthly volume of $147,000 in December 2019.
SuperRare operates on a 15% commission basis with 85% going to the creator — but what is even more appealing to artists is the 10% royalty fee on secondary sales. A practice infamously absent from the traditional art market, this enables artists to see continued revenue from a work if it goes on to appreciate in value. To understand just how powerful this is, let’s look at a recent example. Two years ago, collector Jason Bailey bought an artwork by Robbie Barrat for $176. When it was recently sold to another collector, CuriousNfts for $13,265 on the secondary market, Robbie woke up to find that he had automatically been paid $1,326 as part of the transaction. In other words, as continued patronage for his artwork, Robbie received a payment of 7.5 times the original sale amount when the work had gained value and sold to another collector. It has been thrilling to see this model continue to prove itself over the past two years.
SuperRare in numbers:
- Community in 178 countries worldwide
- Artworks collected: 8,383
- Earned by collectors: $521,465
- Earned by artists around the world: $1,661,682 (On July 3rd, 2020 SuperRare officially passed the $1M earned by artists mark. Check out this video which features SuperRare artists and collectors giving their thoughts on the historic achievement)
SuperRare sees volume increase 365%. Research analyst at Messari Crypto, Mason Nystrom, has plotted the growth charts, for SuperRare, and notes that collectors from 178 countries have earned over $350,000 in secondary sales, demonstrating a vibrant post-auction market.
In 2018, SuperRare presented at Christie’s Art + Technology blockchain summit and introduced the benefits of blockchain to collectors in the traditional art world. Last year, the project collaborated with DADA for an event at the Tate Modern museum in London — the first time art was created in a world-class museum then immediately made available for collectors across the world.
2020 main events:
- In January 2020, SuperRare Team and MW Projects presented Pure Form: Geometric Abstraction in Blockchain Art, a group exhibition of blockchain technology-based artworks. The 12 artists in the exhibition explored abstraction in new ways, utilizing the latest in technology on a platform that brings together art creation, art viewing and fully transparent art commerce. Each artwork was a digital collectible. The exhibition took place at SuperRare’s gallery in the Cryptovoxels virtual world powered by the Ethereum blockchain.
- On April 24th — May 23rd, 2020 Outer Space — SuperRare Virtual Exhibition took place in Cryptovoxels.
- This May, the team launched a charity auction in partnership with Ethereal Virtual Summit 2020.
- On June 26, they opened SuperRare’s first virtual reality art show, Aether, in VRChat. Exhibited in the VR world are 3D sculptures by seven of our 3D/VR artists: Frenetik Void, Giant Swan, Glass Crane, Marc O Matic, Metageist, Rosie Summers and Sven Eberwein. This art event aims to explore the world of 3D and VR art, and to expand the possibilities of exhibition, experience, and meaning of art in the digital age.
- On August 28th, they opened SuperRare’s second virtual reality art show, Atlantis, in VRChat. Exhibited in the VR world are 3D sculptures by CryptoSpectr, VR_Rosie, Crypt0_Baby, bingkoland, Matt Buelt, Marc-O-Matic, Metageist, pirate_sheep, trippyogi, Spaced Painter, Scotbot, and more. This art event aimed to explore the world of 3D and VR art, and to expand the possibilities of exhibition, experience, meaning of art and sculptures in the digital age.
If the team continues this trend of working on original exhibitions formats and collaborates further with highly established and respected blockchain and art institutions, the social collecting network will go nowhere but up.
Read this getting-started guide for new SuperRare artists.
Here is a freshly-published SuperRare Weekly Update:
You can apply to join the Artist Network here.
Check out SuperRare Editorial. Find SuperRare blog here. Follow it on Twitter. Join it’s Discord. Follow SuperRare on Instagram and Cent.
MakersPlace — Premier rare digital art market
“MakersPlace really started with an eye towards helping creatives and artists. That’s where our name comes from — we’re a place for makers. That’s our roots.
So we built this platform to help artists get onto the blockchain. We issue these non-fungible tokens (ERC-721s), authenticate their identity and ultimately sell their works. From there, we’ve continued to build out the product. Just a few months ago, we launched a full-fledged marketplace and community. So today, what you see on MakersPlace is a marketplace and community where you can discover, collect and show off your rare digital art collections. And so that’s where we’re at today.”
MakersPlace is a marketplace to discover and collect truly unique digital creations by the world’s most creative minds. It empowers digital creators with the tools to protect and sell their digital creations to their fans and collectors. Artists, photographers, writers, and more use MakersPlace to create and sell their work online through the use of blockchain technology.
MakersPlace blockchain technology provides the following benefits to creators:
- Scarcity: When you upload your creation to the blockchain, you can define the number of editions you want to release. The control and distribution of the editions is automated on the blockchain, so you can tightly manage the scarcity of your creations. No more than the defined number of editions, will ever be released.
- Authenticity: When you upload your creation to the blockchain, it cannot be changed thereafter. Buyers can trust that the artwork they are purchasing is the original and has not been tampered with, because the publicly accessible data on the blockchain is always available to verify it. Even if other people copy it (as many tend to do online with digital content), the value of your artwork will not degrade, as long as the specific editions can be verified on the blockchain.
- Ownership: Every transfer/purchase of your creations, is recorded on the blockchain. This means that there is a publicly accessible ownership history for your creations. Provenance is automated and accurate. Having a publicly accessible way to verify ownership will create more value for your creations since it’ll be easier to identify infringing use of it. It’ll also make it easier for you to support any DMCA takedown requests.
What does MakersPlace offer?
- Proof of ownership and authenticity on the blockchain. MakersPlace offers simple-to-use tools to help you digitally sign and upload your work onto the blockchain, creating verifiable proof that you are the creator and owner of your work.
- Custom storefront. It provides tools to help you easily create a customized storefront that you can then share with your audience to sell your work.
- Distribution. The team has partnered with the largest online marketplaces to help you syndicate your work and reach a broader audience to sell your work. From the latest collabs, they’ve partnered with Grow Your Base, a platform to learn, engage and earn digital assets, for a special Rare Digital Art giveaway.
MakersPlace is currently free to use for the members. This means that the transaction fees associated with interacting with the blockchain will be covered by MakersPlace until further notice. However, onn successful sales, MakersPlace takes a 15% commission on all purchases in Ether and additionally a credit card transaction fee for purchases done through credit card.
Back in January, MakersPlace entered the world of virtual reality with the opening of their gallery in Cryptovoxels. This summer, in partnership with the Genesis City Art Week in Decentraland, they announced the opening of their newest art gallery and continued expansion into the world of virtual reality in Decentraland. Click to go to MakersPlace Gallery here.
Find some of the highlights over the past year and the goals the team is focusing on in 2020 here.
Check out the full episode with Dannie Chu, founder, and CEO of MakersPlace. Dannie talks about the formative years he spent at Pinterest as an early employee where he focused on growing the user base there into the hundreds of millions, his first encounter with crypto and of course everything that MakersPlace is doing to create a fun, creative and trustworthy destination for cryptoart creators and collectors:
Ready to start your rare digital art collection? Join here.
Follow MakersPlace on Discord, Medium, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.
KnownOrigin — A digital arts marketplace powered by Ethereum
“KnownOrigin is an artist-driven platform that makes it easy for digital creators to authenticate, showcase and sell the artwork and collectables they produce.”
Known Origin is a great curator of different types of digital art work and one of the interesting platforms to discover and support artists.
Empowering artists with a platform to showcase and sell their work securely supported with a public blockchain solution:
To become an artist or contributor on KnownOrigin you create a profile page. Artists will need to have a digital wallet such as MetaMask.io or TrustWallet installed before doing this. Once a profile is created you are free to apply via the Artist application form. Artists create digital artwork that they can tokenize via KnownOrigin. All artwork files are held on IPFS (a distributed storage solution), these assets are given unique identifiers which can be tracked for chain-of-custody and provenance. The artist always controls the number of copies that exist which creates scarcity. Once all the assets have been sold no more will ever be created. All digital artwork can be traced transparently using blockchain technology and anyone can view the transaction history.
Collectors can buy digital assets as NFTs minted via KnownOrigin smart contract. KnownOrigin is a commission based platform and this is programmed into the smart contract, so no middlemen are required, artists will immediately receive remuneration of their work.
Why KnownOrigin uses blockchain?
- Smart and transparent. KnownOrigin is a platform allowing artists to submit limited-edition digital artwork that is backed by blockchain technology. The combination of smart contracts and ERC721 (non-fungible token) compliance adds a level of transparency and security that have never been seen before.
- Proving ownership of digital art. Using blockchain technology any digital artwork can be permanently embedded into a blockchain providing an immutable, trustworthy and reliable source of ownership. Each piece is unique and the full chain-of-custody history can viewed by anyone online
- Providing provenance. Using the power of the Ethereum and smart contracts KnownOrigin provides a trusted and secure way to ensure provenance and chain-of-custody is permanently maintained for digital art which is sold on KnownOrigin
In 2020 the team announced the release of their secondary sales feature, they shared an update about the work that has been done and the decision they have made along the way.
In brief:
- Primary sales breakdown (85% — Artists, 15% — KnownOrigin)
- Secondary sales royalties and fees (87% — seller, 10% — artist, 3% — KO)
- 10% artist royalties (the emerging industry standard)
- Enabling the new marketplace smart contracts
- Accepting, rejecting, increasing and withdrawing offers
KnownOrigin in numbers:
This Spring, the team announced the official opening of KnownOrigin first virtual gallery in CryptoVoxels. The large plot in Origin City showcased a series of KnownOrigin artworks from the awesome artists on the platform. The team is focused on bringing new artists into the NFT space as well as giving established crypto artists a trusted gallery to showcase their artwork. Their CryptoVoxels first gallery acted as a place to launch digital collections, showcase artworks and host various events.
Also, if you were a little behind of times, in 2019, in collaboration with MetaCartel the team created ‘DAO Osaka’, a DAICO created in celebration of a ‘Year of DAOs’ to produce rare collectible art for Devcon 5 in Osaka. 95% of sales went directly back to the DAO, the remaining 5% to the artist. The DAO has raised nearly $900 in pledges and the commission artwork has raised $1400+ in sales, making a nice little profit for those who invested in the experiment. Learn more about ‘DAO Osaka’ here.
On August 28th, ‘MarchOnWashington2020’ virtual took place:
Watch David Moore, Andy Gray and James Morgan, the co-founders of KnownOrigin, give an in-depth presentation of their platform during the 20/01/2020 NFTlondon meetup:
Latest platform changes, an update on some of the latest requested changes from the community:
This week on KnownOrigin:
Follow KnownOrigin on Medium, Twitter or Instagram and start your digital art collection today. There are also Discord, and Telegram chats.
Codex Protocol — Decentralized asset registry for the arts & collectibles ecosystem
“At Codex, we believe there is immense room for growth in the USD 2 Trillion arts & collectibles asset class as investing in tangible, fine artworks and collectibles becomes more accessible, and the value of each piece becomes better understood. By bringing trust and efficiency to the ecosystem, Codex Protocol will ensure more buyers acquire the objects they desire, more sellers receive a fair value for their items, and more intermediaries grow their revenue. With provenance information accessible and private, there is an opportunity for the industry to expand, as services like appraisals, asset-backed lending, artist royalties, insurance, fractional ownership, bidding, escrow, and more become available. The Codex Protocol ecosystem includes applications addressing these use cases.”
Codex Protocol is a decentralised title registry suitable for art, antiques, collectibles and indeed any other kind of high value goods requiring a provenance solution. Initially though, the company focuses on the Art & Collectable (A&C) market which, it is claimed in the white-paper, is worth around $2 trillion. In storing ownership and provenance details, Codex will provides an official trail that records the history and story of an item whilst ensuring privacy for the collector. The Biddable DApp enables buyers to conveniently find what they are hunting for and use cryptocurrency to purchase that item at auction. Industry players understand this and so existing consortium members, such as Luxury Asset Capital (lending) Feral Horses (fractional ownership), are already onboard to be part of the Codex Protocol ecosystem.
The Codex Protocol is based on the Ethereum blockchain and uses its native ERC-20 compatible CodexCoin (CODX) to power its platform. There are various components to the protocol. These can be simplified as:
- CodexCoins which are used for fees/rewards in the registry.
- The staking contract where token holders can stake to receive a discount on fees.
- The proxy contracts through which the core contracts are accessed.
- The Codex Registry itself which is an ERC-721 compliant contract that can link to any crucial metadata.
As provenance is central to this project, it is worth mentioning that metadata can incorporate previous appraisals of artwork along with restoration records, receipts, photos or anything else that can help to establish its authenticity. While anyone can create a record, the majority are expected to be initially done by the auction houses within the ecosystem. When items are loaded onto Codex any associated information needs to be validated. The validators will be rewarded with CODX, which in time is expected to be determined by a reputation-based system.
Most users of the platform will probably access it through an application layer, like the company’s own Biddable, which should be an added attraction for the less-technically minded. Someone wishing to sell an item can delegate viewing permissions to potential buyers, selecting to remain anonymous or go public as they see fit, allowing bidders to view the provenance held on the blockchain.
This summer the team announced the newest feature on Codex that helps collectors better manage their item’s provenance. With the new Codex Record creation, collectors can turn a switch “on” for the specific details that are relevant for their item. Registering a classic car? Add the details for the make, model and condition of your car on to the Record. Registering a signed baseball card? Add the signature location and edition number of your card.
Adding these “switches” and categories to Codex Records not only creates a more robust provenance section for items, but it lays the groundwork for upcoming functionalities. With these new metadata fields, the team will soon be adding tagging features to Codex Records. Users can tag a Record via category, like watch or painting. This will make searching for items in your collection easier and allow you to organize and sort your items into categories.
The project team has also scooped up some praise for being part of the Ethereal charity fundraiser in New York in 2018.
The Codex + Rare Ethereal Art Auction in May 2018, where a CryptoKitty was sold for USD 140,000 worth of ETH, garnered the attention of The New York Times, Wired, Vice News, and more.
The Codex protocol seems quiet while there is almost no recent marketing activity. Nevertheless, its GitHub is up and running as the project has frequent commits to the collection of repositories.
To learn more about Codex initiatives, visit its white paper, blog, and Twitter.
Async Art — Collect and experience rare programmable art
“In my mind a new platform needs the right set of artists who can push the boundaries, are technically oriented, and have great community presence to educate our audience on this brand new concept. I’ve collected art from and/or leased Cryptovoxels gallery space to all of the first group of artists before Async so I already had great relationships with them. It felt like asking friends to come together for a fun collaboration and in its essence, it really was. There is no Async Art without the artists.”
- Conlan, founder of Async Art
Async Art is a new art movement built on the blockchain. Create, collect, and trade programmable art: digital paintings split into “Layers”, which you can use to affect the overall image. Art that can evolve over time, react to its owners, or follow a stock price is now all possible with programmable art.
Async Art’s platform showcases and trades rare digital art that is programmable and able to change over time. Each single, complete artwork on the gallery is called “Master” while the different, modifiable features composing it are called “Layers”. Both Masters and Layers are independently tokenized on the Ethereum blockchain to be bought separately: when collectors purchase a Master they do not own the single Layers that make it up. The variation of a Layer happens at its owner’s will and informs the Master’s appearance, creating new combinations of the piece’s main elements, making asynchronous art evolve. All Async Art pieces, Masters and Layers, are purchased in Ether, with a 10% commission fee on first sales. On secondary sales, 10% of the work’s price goes to the artist as royalty, the 89% goes to the seller while the gallery gets a 1% commission fee.
Async Art appeared online in February 2020 featuring many well-known artists from the crypto art scene. According to Async Art website, there has already been over $500,000 exchanged on the platform and over $240,000 in artist sales.
- Master vs. Layers. The platform allows you to purchase both Masters and Layers. Think of a Master as a 1 of 1 piece of art you’d find on any traditional platform. And Layers are individual parts that make up the Master image. Both Masters and Layers are tokenized on the Ethereum blockchain. Once live, the Master token continually checks its Layer tokens and updates its look based on the Layer owners input.
- For Collectors. When you buy a layer you have the opportunity to influence your favorite artists’ work. Layers are endowed with special abilities decided by the artist. When you change something on a layer the Master image will reflect this regardless of who owns it!
- For Artists. You decide the parameters of your art. It can change as little or as much as you want. Your art could change based on the contents of an owner’s wallet, or maybe reference live weather data. Art has become programmable, and it’s limited only by your imagination.
For more details tap here:
August Auction Recap:
‘A Mind Blowing Chat with Conlan, Founder of Async.Art’:
Follow Async Art Twitter and Discord to get the latest updates. Rear their Blog.
Furtherfield — London’s longest running (de)centre for art and technology
“It’s like a hidden secret! We’re showing real, avant-garde art and it’s like it’s not allowed to be seen. What’s interesting is that we survive so far, by not appeasing. We’ve got a community online, we’ve got an email list with thousands of people on there, we’ve got thirty thousand subscribers to Furtherfield online, and a very high readership of articles and reviews, which we write ourselves through peer-to-peer critique. We’ve built our own website, so there’s a flourishing culture that’s come out of this. You realise that you’re not on your own; you’re actually connected to a lot of different people that have similar views, interests and questions.”
furtherfield is a non-profit online community run by artists where people can discover new ideas and possibilities for art and technology. Since 1996 it has developed an international reputation for initiating experiments in artistic co-creation across digital and physical networks. Pioneering the concept of networked and digital art, Furtherfield is also an arts organization and online magazine where artists, programmers, activists, writers, and thinkers can collaborate on global participatory projects.
Its gallery and lab are located in London’s Finsbury Park where adventurous digital arts activities are held. It provides a decentralized and distributed channel for a diverse group of people to engage with the arts and technology while fostering social change. Furtherfield is known for its advocacy of conveying important global messages through digital creativity.
- Produce playful, collaborative art research-experiences that engage critically with emerging network cultures locally, nationally and internationally, online and off, spanning a range of venues and spaces.
- Pioneer and promote co-creational models that allow everyone access to art and technology, disrupting and democratising existing hegemonies, re-landscaping the terrain.
- Discover and widely share creative technological artworks that deeply engage with the urgent debates of our time.
- Work with free and open source technologies and philosophies, developing a commons culture both digitally and physically — within our Finsbury Park setting and beyond.
Furtherfield team has worked with decentralised network practices in arts and technology since they published their first webpages in 1996 — before the great centralisation — when the web thought it was already distributed and P2P. Furtherfield took the spirit of punk and DIY in a more collaborative direction inspired by Free and Open Source Software methods and cultures, to build new platforms and art contexts with a playful Do It With Others (DIWO) ethos. They still connect with artists, techies, activists and thinkers from the base in Finsbury Park in North London, and internationally online.
In 2015 Furtherfield launched the Art Data Money programme of labs, exhibitions and debates to explore how blockchain technologies and new uses of data might enable a new commons for the arts in the age of networks. This was followed by a range of critical art and blockchain research programming:
- 2015 — The Human Face of Cryptoeconomies, exhibition at Furtherfield Gallery, featuring FaceCoin by Rob Myers, and Building the Activist Bloomberg Terminal by Brett Scott.
- 2016 — Short film: The Blockchain — Change Everything Forever, Furtherfield in collaboration with Digital Catapult.
- 2017 — New World Order European exhibition tour as part of the State Machines programme featuring Plantoids by O’khaos and Terra0
- 2017 — Book: Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain, published by Furtherfield, Torque editions, Liverpool University Press.
- Jaya Klara Brekke: I saw the Blockchain at the End of The World, turned around, and walked back (2018) Written on the occasion of the New World Order group exhibition for PostScriptUM #31 Series published by Aksioma, edited by Janez Janša.
- Blockchain Art Commission (2017) Clickmine by Sarah Friend is a hyperinflationary ERC-20 token that is minted by a clicking game.
- Ethereal Summit NY (2018) Commission and exhibition of contemporary artists working with public blockchains as a medium for conceptual and social experimentation.
Building on this and Furtherfield award winning DAOWO lab and summit series, the team has developed DECAL — the Decentralised Arts Lab and research hub.
Working with leading visionary artists and thinkers, DECAL opens up new channels between artworld stakeholders, blockchain and web3.0 businesses. Through the lab they mobilise research and development by leading artists, using blockchain and web 3.0 technologies to experiment in transnational cooperative infrastructures, decentralised artforms and practices, and improved systems literacy for arts and technology spaces. The goal is to develop fairer, more dynamic and connected cultural ecologies and economies.
2019 DECAL projects:
- Collective — an artist led research project on value creation for collecting 21st Century art forms, with Arteïa.
- CultureStake — a system for equitable opt-in for cultural community stakeholders. With oscoin, the decentralised network to allow a fair economy for world’s open source software. Using quadratic voting on the blockchain, CultureStake’s playful front-end interface allows everyone to vote on the types of cultural activity they would like to see in their locality. CultureStake democratises arts commissioning by providing communities and artists with a way to make cultural decisions together. It does this by giving communities a bigger say in the activities provided in their area, and by connecting artists and cultural organisations to better information about what is meaningful in different localities.
- DAOWO World Tour of the blockchain laboratory and debate series for reinventing the arts — with Ruth Catlow, and Ben Vickers, Serpentine Galleries with Goethe-Institut London.
For more see the Art and Blockchain resource page.
Check out the list of Furtherfield projects here.
Follow Furtherfield on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook.
Nifty Gateway — The premier marketplace for Nifties owned by Gemini
“The biggest difference between our platform and others is that you don’t have to go through the crypto currency onboarding to use Nifty Gateway. Our goal is to reach the mainstream with this platform, and letting people interact with the system without having to onboard onto crypto reduces the amount of user friction significantly.”
- Duncan and Griffin Cock Foster, the co-founders of Nifty Gateway
Nifty Gateway is the exclusive digital art and collectibles platform. It was founded with a very simple mission — to make Nifties accessible to everyone.
Nifty Gateway founders, the twin brothers Duncan and Griffin Cock Foster, launched the Nifty marketplace in March 2020, leveraging Gemini infrastructure on the backend for a dollar-exchange platform. People can buy NFTs with credit cards and cash out directly to their bank accounts when they sell. To start, the collectibles exchange was working with mixed martial arts fighter Cris Cyborg and photographer Lyle Owerko, whose patrons include Justin Timberlake, Beyonce and Jay Z.
“I’ve known Tyler and Cameron for a few years now. We met socially in New York, through friends,” Owerko said. “It’s fun to be an early adopter. … It’s like being a painter in the 1880s and seeing a camera for the first time.”
He’ll offer a series of six images through Nifty’s marketplace for $200 to $2,500 each, depending on the image. Some images will have 25 copies available while others only have one NFT.
“I did this of my own volition,” Owerko added when asked if the company paid him for lending his art to this format. He said this deal was “mutually beneficial.”
The platform makes revenue from transaction fees. The Nifty Gateway team estimated NFTs were a $200 million market in 2018, wrongly predicting the collectibles game CryptoKitties would remain a “project to watch” in 2019. CryptoKitties now attracts fewer than 200 weekly users, according to DappRadar, down from the 2017 peak of 14,914 daily active users. The NFT market is still seeing dismal growth in traditional tech terms. Nonfungible.com estimates the gaming startup Decentraland is one of the top three NFT market leaders yet facilitated roughly 50 transactions in the past week.
By comparison, the Nifty team’s initial experiment with 10,000 Crypto Punk NTFs garnered roughly 3,569 transactions in two years, meaning fewer than half of them sold and few of them traded. On the other hand, OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer said his NFT marketplace now sees roughly $1.5 million in monthly trading volume, with a little under 10,000 active user accounts. With the Ethereum network buckling under congestion from coronavirus-induced volatility, Finzer said this may increase transaction fees the platforms pay for each swap.
“If the Ethereum network remains super clogged, developers may just not build NFTs anymore,” he said. “Then more NFT projects may move to other main chains.”
Given the instability among Ethereum’s fan base, the Cock Foster twins are looking to tap into celebrity fandoms, hoping to launch NFTs with more athletes and artists with devoted followings.
“In the art world you don’t really see Picasso’s trading cap or trading volume,” Duncan Cock Foster said. “We’re also working on Nifty display devices. … People have to be able to hang their NFT up on their wall.”
Check out Nifty Stats. Top selling nifties (by secondary market sales) — stats updated in real-time.
How does it work?
Nifty Gateway teams up with Top artists and brands to create collections of limited edition, high quality Nifties, exclusively available on the platform. They’ve teamed up with people like world renowned artist Michael Kagan. Apply to create with Nifty Gateway here.
Each collection is opened at a specific time (a drop), and is only available for a limited time.
The team does new drops about once a few days. After the initial drop for a collection closes or sells out, you will only be able to get nifties from that collection in the marketplace.
Nifty Gateway is also a centralized, USD based marketplace for buying and selling Nifties.
Nifty Gateway lets you display your Nifties, as well as withdraw them to external wallets, or deposit Nifties from external wallets into your collection.
Tune on an episode of Off The Chain with host Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano and guests, Duncan and Griffin Cock Foster, the founders of Nifty Gateway. In this conversation, the Cock Foster twins and Anthony discuss what it was like growing up together, why they pursued startups, how NFTs work, why Nifties are likely to be so valuable in the future, how the Gemini acquisition came together, and what artists are launching collections on their new US dollar centralized NFT exchange.
Follow the project on Twitter, Instagram.
Rarible — Create and sell digital collectibles secured with blockchain
“Rarible is the premiere NFT marketplace where you can mint, buy and sell digital collectibles without any coding skills.”
Rarible is a creator-centric NFT marketplace. Via the platform, users can create and sell digital collectibles secured with blockchain.
This July, the team introduced RARI — the first governance token in the NFT space. RARI enables the most active creators and collectors on Rarible to vote for any platform upgrades and participate in curation and moderation. Rarible ultimate goal is to evolve towards a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), where all decision rights will belong to the platform users. RARI token, awarded to the active users of the platform, will act as the governance instrument: it will enable collectors and creators to vote on multiple upgrades and decide how the platform should develop further. This makes the governance of the platform directly responsive to the most active users and brings Rarible closer to being a public good operated by the community members who value it most.
Why now?
The Rarible team is working on a set of exciting new features, and they want the community to participate in prioritizing their roll-out.
- NFT market index
For the collectors who would like to invest in NFT market, but are unsure what artwork to choose, Rarible will provide the opportunity to invest in NFT index — a portfolio of the most promising NFTs.
- Price Discovery Mechanism
- Mobile App
- Social Features
- More Types of Content (AR+VR+Metaverse+3D)
- DeFi NFTs
- Fractional Ownership
[Special Interview] Alex, PM at Rarible:
Follow Rarible on Medium, Twitter, Discord, Telegram and Instagram to stay tuned with the latest news and platform updates.
Mintbase — Virtual economy starter pack and NFT factory
“Mintbase is a global platform that allows anyone, including those with less technical backgrounds, to create their own digital assets verified on multiple blockchains. Mintbase provides creators (minters) with various creative allocation and redemption mechanisms for their customers.”
Mintbase is a non-fungible token creation and ticketing platform built on the Ethereum blockchain. Nate Geier and Carolin Wend have been building Mintbase out of Full Node, Berlin. With Mintbase, they aim to revolutionize the traditional ticketing industry as well as creation and trading of other items like game assets and crypto art.
Mintbase is a global marketplace — like Amazon. It allows anyone, including those with less technical backgrounds, to create their own digital assets verified on multiple blockchains. Mintbase provides users (minters) with various creative allocation and redemption mechanisms for their customers. This means that you can offer, buy and sell your items. Unlike Amazon, you can also sell your items on other digital exchanges. Mintbase allows you to create scarce, interoperable and unique digital items via NFTs.
The users come to Mintbase and deploy their own store, which is a verified smart contract contract, and mint NFTs on this contract. Each NFT (non-fungible token) consists of multiple assets uploaded to The Arweave Project (music, art, tickets, legal…) bound to the NFT for auth/access.
The only fee point is when you sell an item with a greater than zero price. For every item sold, the platform takes a 2% fee that will help it grow and run the traditional infrastructure.
You can still mint and move your assets to OpenSea and sell them there without sending a wei to Mintbase.
Mintbase plans on adding multiple chains in the future. The goal is to have the new Mintbase Store contract factory to Quantstamp for audits by late September and aiming for mid to late October 2020 for the first NEAR interface interaction.
- 784 stores
- 2,219 bought
- 72,858 transactions
- 104.8 earned
[Special Interview] Nate Geier & Carolin Wend from Mintbase.io:
Follow Mintbase on Medium, Twitter, Telegram, Instagram, LinkedIn.
NFT Showroom — NFT art platform built on Hive
“NFT Showroom is a digital art marketplace built on the Hive blockchain. Hive is a fast and feeless blockchain, that scales, is globally accessible, and unlocks an entire ecosystem beyond art. Our aim is to provide a platform that is easy to use and less expensive for both the creator and collector to transact on and solve exisitng problems in the crypto art sphere.”
On NFT Showroom artists can create limited edition tokenized art that can be sold on the market. Collectors can cuy, sell and trade limited edition art. NFT Showroom offers artists the option to make the art available for commercial uses which adds additional security for both the artist and collector.
How to get started?
Here are the basics but feel free to visit NFT Showroom Get Started page.
To begin creating and collecting you will need a Hive account and Hive keychain. Hive keychain is a browser extension that securely encrypts your keys and allows you to safely and easily authorize transactions on the platform.
Get a Hive account and install keychain, quick tutorial:
Fee structure and secondary sales
NFT creation costs 5 SWAP.HIVE + 1 SWAP.HIVE per edition. Upon completion of the initial sale NFT Showroom collects a 10% commission. Upon completion of secondary market sales NFT Showroom collects a 10% comission and pays half of that as a royalty to the original artist.
Who owns the creations?
As the creator of the token you have digital ownership of your work. NFT Showroom offers two options when creating a token, Private and Full Commercial:
- Private means the artist retains the full copyright to the art. The buyer may display the art as part of their collection or resell it on the secondary market.
- Full Commercial means the artist is selling the full commercial rights to the art. This means the buyer can use the art for commercial projects. This could include making prints, t-shirt designs, website/blog graphics etc.
Currently items can only be listed with a Buy it now price, bidding is on the roadmap.
For more details check out FAQ.
In August the team released two updates:
- Create your own curated follow feed
- Smart Lock for mobile users. Lots of people are reliant on their mobile devices and the team wants buying and selling on NFT Showroom to be as easy as possible for all.
Check out latest platform update:
NFT Showroom: An interview with Julia K. of NFT Showroom. Here she talks about how her experience in physical art shares similarities to her digital art experience. She describes what the platform is, some timelines, expectations, and helps to introduce a new opportunity for artists and collectors on Hive.
Here are NFT Showroom’s Blog, Twitter, Instagram.
For any questions or support please visit the team in discord NFT Showroom discord.
Cryptograph — Digital collectibles from your favourite icons and artists that raise money for charity
“Cryptographs are one-of-a-kind digital collectibles created by icons and artists that support good causes forever. A Cryptograph is publicly available, i.e. anyone can see it, but only one person in the world can own it at a time. A Cryptograph can be anything as long as it is an original digital creation, such as a song, a video, an artwork, a piece of prose, a performance, a 3D design, etc. Physical creations can also be digitised to create a Cryptograph, but the physical “original” is destroyed so that the creation can fully transcend into the digital realm.”
Thanks to blockchain technology, each Cryptograph is 100% owned by its collector and cannot be forged or destroyed. From a technical perspective, a Cryptograph is composed of both the media that is made by the creator, and the non-fungible token that is minted alongside this media. The token resides on the Ethereum blockchain, and holds all relevant information about the Cryptograph and its provenance, which ensures its perpetual existence and the immutability of its ownership. The token also contains the hashes of the original media (ensuring they are all genuine) and links to the media hosted on several decentralised storage solutions (e.g. IPFS). Ideally, the media itself would be stored alongside the token in the smart contract, but this is currently technically not practical for large files on the blockchain. As Cryptograph smart contract being upgradable, this feature could be implemented if storing media on the blockchain becomes practical eventually. Meanwhile, the media is also stored on its servers to be displayed on the website, and to guarantee at least a seed for P2P downloads.
The rights that a creator could attach to their Cryptograph are theoretically limitless, but the minimum rights that a Cryptograph owner always gets on the platform are:
- The ability to display Cryptographs in their collection, as well as in the Cryptograph collection app
- The ability to keep and to sell the Cryptograph
- The ability to display, use and share it for all non-commercial purposes
- The ability to permanently add up to 3 characters into the “Owners Mark” array in the Cryptograph token e.g. your initials
Moreover, because the blockchain is an open software environment, Cryptograph details, transaction data and ownership records can be read by anyone or any platform connected to the internet. This means that any website, video game or digital world can give Cryptograph collectors access to unique features because they own a Cryptograph. For example, a digital world can allow Cryptograph collectors, and only them, to display the Cryptographs they own in their virtual houses in a certain way
Each Cryptograph generates proceeds every time it is sold, gifted, or an incentive is paid to a bidder, forever. At the initial auction, the proceeds generated are equal to the final bid minus incentives paid to bidders during the auction. For secondary market auctions, a 10% sale fee is generated as proceeds. When a Cryptograph is gifted, it generates a transfer fee equal to 15% of the last sale price as proceeds. Finally, there is a 0.5% incentive fee on all incentives paid to bidders who were outbid.
All proceeds generated by a Cryptograph are always split between the creator, a charitable cause of the creator’s choice, and Perpetual Altruism, the company behind Cryptograph. All proceeds are generated in cryptocurrencies. Perpetual Altruism, the company behind Cryptograph, then converts these proceeds into Fiat currency and distributes their share to the creator and to their chosen charitable cause via a charitable trust.
From the latest news, the team announced that they have joined forces with The Giving Block to bring sustainable funding to crypto-friendly nonprofits. Cryptograph will now be enabled to donate crypto to nonprofits via The Giving Block.
Check out Cryptograph Platform Update:
Read Cryptograph White Paper and Blog, follow the project on Twitter, Instagram, Cryptovoxels, and Cent.
Pixeos — The art experience of the future
“The platform is really an expansive art/gaming ecosystem. In fact, pixEOS is much more than just a collaborative canvas (known as Pixeos Paint). That game/graffiti wall/community art project is just our first of many art and gaming tools.
In fact now we have 7 multiplayer blockchain games out in our Game Center. We’ve created a smart economy on the EOS blockchain, and when we integrate the standard for digital goods encompassing gaming assets, as well as rare digital art, we’re going to take the project to the next level.”
Pixeos develops arts smart-economy on the blockchain where Pixeos tokens have multiple utilities and support the artists, promote and present their work. The team has implemented a staking and profit sharing tokenomic system into the canvas, and that’s just the beginning. This canvas represents the nascent phase of development for an NFT protocol that enables other facets of the Pixeos platform, including Art Gallery, Art House, Auction House, Personal Canvases, and a series of upcoming games reliant on NFT based assets.
Pixeos projects:
- ART GALLERY — The Grand pixEOS Art Gallery allows artists and collectors to sell and collect art and digital assets
- PAINT FE — The commemorative canvas, where you can paint using pixEOS tokens!
- THE HUB — As part of pixEOS ongoing experimentation with user interfaces, the pixEOS Hub is a different way to explore the pixEOS ecosystem
- AVATAR MAKER — An experiment in user avatar creation, Avatar Maker evolved into a popular and fun tool for the community
Soon to come a commission art marketplace for custom orders of art, design and creative media.
Last month, the team announced Pixeos’s departure from EOS Main Net to the new UX Network, a blockchain ecosystem running on EOSIO software customized with institution-level financial architecture that enables multi-layers of identity and compliance. In addition to these benefits, they will be bringing on a fully balanced and incentivized token ecosystem written by the team at UtilityX Labs. This token model will use the Virtual Proof of Work protocol on the UtilityX platform that was founded by 0rigin Ventures. The platform allows to introduce fiat assets and other financial products which will be announced in due course.
The Pixeos team is busy working with their partners in the dGoods initiative, rolling out the standards for the NFT protocols of the future. While the code behind NFTs is hashed out, Pixeos is creating what will be a vibrant ecosystem for gamers, artists, developers, and collectors that will harness the true potential of NFT enabled commerce.
Also, Pixeos has partnered with Caer Sidi to empower the production of the Pixeos Phygital NFC artist kits and dGoods initiative in order to help create open-sourced standards for NFTs.
A few weeks ago, Pixeos has established a new ARTnership with Altered_Data’s White Page Gallery to enrich the artist community in their platform. Altered_Data’s White Page Gallery is a web page space for digital art hosted by Domenico Barra happening in the network and community of the White Page Gallery/s, a decentralized and distributed art network born in June 2019. This is the first ARTnership of such nature that will revolve around digital art collectability popularization. Previously, Pixeos partnered up with Canvia, an innovative digital art frame, and platform that allows users to display thousands of artworks in their homes and other spaces.
Latest Pixeos Monthly Digest:
Here are Pixeos Medium, Twitter, Telegram, Instagram.
Snark.Art — Art production platform that uses blockchain as a creative tool
“Initially the idea was much simpler than it is now — to put digital art on the blockchain and use it for identification and tracing provenance. But we quickly grew interested in looking a bit further and trying to understand if this technology could influence the art itself. Then Misha came up with this shift — let’s try to use blockchain as an artistic medium. Admittedly it took me a while to get used to the idea, but now i feel like it’s the only way…”
Snark.Art is a Brooklyn-based blockchain laboratory exploring creative and commercial possibilities in art. Snark.Art’s mission is to use the power of blockchain to change the way art is made and collected. They work with established artists, as well as up-and-coming digital artists, to help them shape the new medium of cryptoart, blockchain art, and crypto collectibles. The goal is to push the boundaries of blockchain technology, while also introducing crypto investors to a new form of art and asset. Snark.Art works with artists to create blockchain-based crypto art: it’s the artist’s vision, with an assist from Snark.Art’s technology and community marketing help. These digital art works are then offered to the public via Snark.Art’s auction and sales platform.
Snark.Art has been building relationships with collectors for the past two years, working on digital projects and solo exhibitions, including collateral events for the Venice Biennale.
In 2020, the team introduced the Age of Quarantine (AoQ). AoQ is a new platform for artists to sell art and support one another during the post-pandemic recovery — a viral response to the virus.
Currently, the platform takes a 10 percent cut on sales, to cover development and hosting costs, while artists get 60 percent. The other artists onSnark.Art share the remaining 30 percent of the proceeds, offering a more equitable, sustainable way for artists to do business, especially during this difficult moment.
“The last few months have shown us that we must find a way to change how our society functions,” Misha Libman, said in a statement. “The art community is not an exception.”
The platform largely caters to collectors with modest budgets, with most works on sale for less than $1,500, but a few outliers are priced at up to $33,000.
Unlike a traditional gallery, the company doesn’t hold inventory, and instead puts collectors in touch with artists directly to arrange the delivery of artworks.
Also, it leads to two major advantages to artists: the ability to tap into younger demographics (by selling cheaper pieces to much larger audiences) and enabling liquidity in the marketplace that wasn’t liquid prior to this. For example, Snark.art worked with top artists like Eve Sussman who was able to distribute over 1,400 pieces of art at $120 each, leading to well over $150,000 in proceeds to the artist.
Snark.art, a laboratory that works with artists that want to explore the boundaries of blockchain technology and use it as a medium in their art, thus giving art a potential that didn’t previously exist in the physical or digital worlds. Watch a preview of “89 seconds Atomized”, which is a collaboration with a Brooklyn-based artist Eve Sussman and a re-invention of Sussman’s well-known video artwork “89 Seconds at Alcázar”, on Ethereum London meetup in 2019:
Check out Snark.Art’s list of events. From June 25th to 28th, 2020, Snark.art showcased its latest collaborations during CADAF Online, a virtual art fair. This event remains the most recent for now.
Follow the project on Medium, Telegram, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
InfiNFT — A token minting platform with a focus on flexibility and longevity
“InfiNFT is a token minting platform that allows users to create NFTs with fully on-chain metadata. Files are stored on Arweave and IPFS.”
InfiNFT is a token minting platform that allows users to create their own NFTs with fully on-chain metadata. The focus on token integrity will ensure that your creations will be around as long as the blockchain underpinning them. With on-chain data, you no longer have to rely on services such as Google, Amazon, or other meta storage options to remain serving your metadata source.
InfiNFT gives creators a simple way to deploy your own NFT contract, and then use it to mint NFT tokens as you see fit.
Due to size limitations with Ethereum, NFT file data is stored on both the Arweave blockchain and IPFS. Both file hashes from these storage platforms are written to the NFT during minting. The team believes this redundant storage, especially when paired with on-chain metadata, provides an extremely robust token solution with the goal of being everlasting. Any NFT minted through the platform is fully ERC721 compliant, and is tradeable via marketplaces such as OpenSea.
Costs associated with permanently storing files are factored into the minting price. While these are usually minimal, this allows you to be sure images and content will be around forever.
Check out:
To learn more join the InfiNFT Discord. Follow InfiNFT on Twitter.
Extra/Creativity
Cryptovoxels is a virtual world powered by the Ethereum blockchain. Players can buy land and build stores and art galleries. Editing tools, avatars, text chat and voice chat are built in.
The look and feel is somewhat akin to Minecraft. “I was inspired by Minecraft and loved the idea of a Minecraft city that is owned by its users,” Ben Nolan Cryptovoxels lead developer told Hard Fork earlier this year.
Every asset in Cryptovoxels can also be sold as a non-fungible token, a unique “digital asset that cannot be duplicated and is registered on the blockchain,” BnoiitC told Hard Fork.
It means that everyone can cross-reference the blockchain to see who owns what in the virtual world. Assets in Cryptovoxels including land and artwork can be bought or sold on crypto-collectible marketplace OpenSea.
“To display [your asset] in Cryptovoxels you need to buy land and build blocks on it,” BnoiitC said. “Then you can paste the OpenSea links. When you click on a picture it opens the OpenSea listing and you can buy the NFT,” they added.
Explore Galleries, Artists, Portals and curated Collections.
The Museum of Contemporary Art, London was founded in 1994 as a project based museum. No formal built space was to be required to mount a series of international exhibitions that incorporated sculpture, video, painting, photography and installation. Projects were curated for virtual and specific sites.
In January 2004 MOCA opened a project space in South London in the Bellenden Renewal Area to initiate a series of exhibitions that were locally based but global in focus. The Project Space exists to offer established and upcoming artists the possibility of making non-commercial work, developing the projects over various periods of time to suit both the artist and MOCA. Projects emerge when they are ready. This co-operative style of working means that the Project Space has no formal exhibition structure, and works are in situ when they are ready.
Current Web exhibition: Ben Woodeson (1–30 September 2020)
The BAE is a platform for the primary sale of digital tokenized art, or as it is now known Cryptoart. To buy Crypto art you will need to have the Metamask plugin or Trust wallet app installed. You can pay in Paypal but to hold your art collection you will need one of the above mentioned apps. To join the BAE as an artist you need nothing other than digital art files and a paypal.
Check out BAE whitepaper 2020 here:
left gallery is a digital art gallery operating since 2015, headed by artist Harm van den Dorpel. Harm was one of the first artists to experiment with blockchain-based certificates of authenticity (CoA) using Ascribe and subsequently Ethereum NFTs. After artists and collectors encountered UX issues due to limitations of the Ethereum Blockchain, left gallery proposed a Cosmos SDK chain with custom features that will improve the UX and custody features for NFT certificates of authenticity.
First launched in 2019, these artworks explore digital art with novel property rights associated with it. Using the Ethereum blockchain, it is possible to introduce scarcity of ownership alongside novel economic and property rights. Inspired by Radical Markets, this artwork follows a modified Harberger Tax (COST) property ownership where the tax on the property (patronage) is collected only by the artist.
Valued at: 5.99 ETH (~$2611 USD)
Current Patron: 0x16767CE2aAe248aa2fD0A6FC601fDA7184bd5638
Time Held By Patron: 2 months
The digital artwork above is always on sale.
In order to own this artwork, you always have to specify a sale price.
Anyone can buy it from the current patron at any time for the specified sale price.
Whilst held, a fee (based on the patronage rate) is constantly levied, per second, as patronage towards the artist.
For more information, read this article:
- Pascal Boyart — street artist incorporated Bitcoin wallet QR codes in pieces raised $1,000 from small donations
French crypto graffiti artist Pascal Boyart painted a mural and hid $1,000 worth of Bitcoin in it. One month later, local authorities had “censored” the artwork by covering it with gray paint.
The artwork depicted French protest group the Gilet Jaunes in a re-imagining of Eugène Delacroix’s artwork “La Liberté guidant le peuple” (Liberty leading the people). It was a decidedly political statement.
But one cryptocurrency enthusiast and artist isn’t standing for its censorship. Meet “BnoiitC,” who’s using blockchain to make cryptoart immutable and virtually impossible to censor. BnoiitC recreated Boyart’s Parisian mural in the Cryptovoxels, and you can own a piece of it.
Similarly to Boyart, artist Andy Bauch has produced puzzle-like crypto artworks containing abstract codes, which provide hints to retrieving the private keys to wallets containing thousands of dollars’ worth of cryptocurrencies.
- Simon Denny — Exploring the world of blockchain through art
A New Zealand artist’s ‘fan art’ exhibition in New York in 2016 told the story of blockchain visionaries, bitcoin and the future of cryptocurrency through the mediums of cartoons and board games.
MagNFT was through with one specific goal. Help the NFT Art scene grow, and provide a medium for collectors to discover emerging or established artists in the ecosystem. Since the 1st issue, the team has supported, launched and financially contributed to the ecosystem.
Recent issue:
DeFi Arts Intelligencer is a weekly source for key happenings around Ethereum art, collectibles, games, finance, and more.
Fresh issue:
- Chart Art — TA as art
Some chartists use TradingView drawing tools in such creative ways, that their artistry awes most beholders. For them the chart area is like a canvas, the toolbar is a palette and the drawing tools are fine brushes. Their chart annotations are the brush strokes of a skilled artist. The ideas in this section were handpicked by the team of TradingView editors not for their accuracy or the amount of profit they delivered, but rather for their beauty. They showcase the imaginative and technical skills of their authors.
Here are some pieces from the Chart Art Gallery.
Worth mentioning, there is a lot of everyday chart stuff in the crypto world that inspires its community’s creativity. If you just scroll your Twitter feed, within news and opinions, you may find some of the truly extraordinary masterpieces. One of my current favourites is DeFi Dude’s unicorn (TVL in Loopring in June):
Conclusion
Blockchain is rapidly proliferating the area of arts. From revolutionary crypto art, asset tokenization and decentralized property rights registries, blockchain technology continues to facilitate innovation in the field.
The aforementioned platforms have the potential to solve a bunch of problems and to reshape the landscape of entrepreneurial organizations within the arts and creative industries. Many of them are already successfully using blockchain technology, have a massive base of artists, collectors, and the devoted community.
However, despite the benefits of using the blockchain in the arts field, there still remain some concerns. Let us say, blockchain platforms are still not widely used, and most people still have no idea what blockchain technology is and what benefits it can offer. There are a lot of good blockchain projects, but the barrier is that many of them experience the lack of demand as the majority of artists are simply non-techies, they may be distant from complex technology world and bypass platforms without user friendly simple UI.
Another significant issue is that inconsistencies and registries are difficult to erase, as some platforms do not have a pre-check of the information that is hosted on the blockchain. For that reason, incorrect information can be an issue. One more difficulty is linking the physical work of art to its record in the blockchain, therefore it is still possible to link a fake artwork to the record or omit information about its condition.
Furthermore, many truly promising projects are stuck or disappear without making an announcement (or hope, they are just still quietly making a product). For example, the Maecenas, a blockchain launched at the end of 2017, which issued 6 million of Art tokens relating to a work by Andy Warhol in July 2018, in the total value of US$ 6.5 million for a 49% share, in 2020 did not release a single news and abandoned all media channels. The same situation is with Portion which aimed to create an ecosystem that replaces traditional auction house models, with a more decentralized approach that relies on blockchain-powered provenance and cryptocurrency payments, with Swiss “trust distribution platform” for artists, dealers, and art organizations FRESCO, with Scarab Experiment, a decentralized art project that was to create a work of art using an algorithmic imaging process for every 1,000 artworks submitted, and with a dozen of platforms, which were not resistant enough to survive the bear market.
Nevertheless, innovations in blockchain along with being a source of inspiration, are helping to lead the technological transformation of the art market, and this looks set to progress .
References
Whitepapers, webpages, blogs and social media of projects listed above.
The Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report 2020.
Lock S. (2020) Estimated value of the online art market worldwide 2013–2024. Statista.
Bookoiit, J. Cimbol, L. Collins, S.L., and Newman, D.L. (2019). A brief introduction to digital art & blockchain. Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal, 37(3), 553–559.
Whitaker A. (2019) Art and Blockchain: A Primer, History, and Taxonomy of Blockchain Use Cases in the Arts, University of Arkansas Press, Vol. 8, №2 (Summer 2019), pp. 21–46.
Mire S.(2018) Blockchain For Art: 9 Possible Use Cases. Disraptor Daily.
Whitaker A., and Kräussl R. (2018). Blockchain, fractional ownership, and the future of creative work. Goethe University Center for Financial Studies, Working Paper №594.
O’Dwyer, R. (2018) Producing artificial scarcity for digital art on the blockchain and its implications for cultural industries. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media.
Lotti, L. (2016) Contemporary art, capitalization and the blockchain: On the autonomy and automation of art’s value. Finance and Society, 2(2), 96–110.
