SIGN Art offers certification service to artists

Thanks to the service, artists will be able to protect intellectual rights to their digital art and sell their works.

Protection of the author’s rights has always been a major issue for the digital art market. Proving the ownership of a digital work of art is often problematic, and a need for a tool enabling artists to certify rights to their digital art has been there for a while.

A project called SIGN Art aims to help resolve this issue by offering a digital art gallery and certification tools built on the Waves Platform.

SIGN Art will allow digital artists to showcase their work in their own SIGN Art portfolio, to certify ownership of their digital pieces and, and, at a later stage, sell their tokenized art in a non-fungible token (NFT) market, also enjoying pleasantly low fees.

SIGN Art is a project by Signature Chain, a broader-scale blockchain document certification service.

By timestamping hash IDs onto the SIGN blockchain, artists can certify digital data and later prove ownership of a piece of digital art, if necessary.

Service for artists

“Coming from an art school background and having spent nearly a decade making graffiti at a younger age, I felt passionate about the idea of connect tech and art and solving copyright protection problems,” says Christophe Verdot, the creator of SIGN Art.

His initial project, Signature Chain, was applicable to a number of use cases, and the idea was to choose one specific field and focus on streamlining a solution for it. Art looked like an area where a blockchain certification service would come in handy.

“We started to study what we could do with art works,” explains Verdot. “The main idea was a blockchain certification tool for artists that can display all their blockchain-certified works on one page that would work like a portfolio.”

“Pushing our research a bit farther, we realized that adding an NFT market in the future on top of the blockchain certification tool could be very beneficial for everyone, especially since one of the main complaints from digital artists about current NFT market platforms is the gas fee that is often way too high,” he adds. “With the Waves platform’s low fixed fee and no gas, this platform would be best suited for an NFT market.”

Overcoming challenges

According to Verdot, the main challenge in developing SIGN Art is making sure that artists’ needs are taken care of.

“There are already several other platforms offering similar services and we should not base our solution only on the fact that Waves is faster or has lower fees,” he explains. “It’s also very important to offer a good, user-friendly web application that makes artists feel at home.”

“We also want to do our best to keep it as decentralized as possible in the sense that users would not need to create any centralized accounts or share any personal information with us,” Verdot adds. “Instead, we’ll allow users to simply connect and participate with Waves Signer.”

SIGN Art’s proof of concept is already available. The project aims to release its first version soon, which is focused on certification tools. An NFT market is expected to be added in the second version.

“We are still studying the best way to put everything together in the development of the first version and are tentatively planning to release it on the testnet at end of the third quarter,” says Verdot. “Since we’ve already received substantial interest from artists, with many expressing their excitement to participate in the platform, it is even more important for us to take time to build the solution correctly, taking into account every aspect of this market, as well as users expectations.”

Attractive fees

SIGN Art will charge a 5–8% fee on a successful sale: 5% on sales that occur using SIGN tokens and 8% if it occurs using WAVES or USDN. These fees are noticeably lower than 10–15% fees charged by most other similar platforms.

Meanwhile, anyone with a Waves address can take part in SIGN Art using Waves Signer, which is extensionless, unlike MetaMask on the Ethereum network.

Users won’t have to download or install any apps. They will just need access to a Waves address. Thanks to Waves Signer, SIGN Art will also support mobile devices.

Further plans

According to Verdot, after the initial release focused on art certification tools, the next step will be the implementation of a non-fungible token (NFT) market.

“The main idea is to allow artists and collectors to sell and buy art in a form of NFTs,” he says. “This market should accept SIGN token, USDN and WAVES.”

“We have some other features in mind, like, for instance, a verified status for artists and a reputation rating by users, but it’s still a bit early for that, and we prefer to move one step at a time,” he adds. “We’ll release the first version and collect feedback, which may also shape the development of the next version.”

One issue any project of this kind is set to face is improper content. Therefore, SIGN Art plans to make sure that uploaded art is in compliance with laws and regulations, while allowing artists to retain control over their pieces. Still, there are no plans for mandatory verification.

“We won’t require artists to get verified, although we may consider adding an optional verification system in the future,” says Verdot. “But we will work on educating users about what to do to verify an account.

“This is an exciting project, still in its early development stages, but it’s already attracting a great deal of interest from the digital art community, and we are impatient to share the first version with them to get their feedback,” concludes Verdot. “We want to proceed in cycles and involve artists in each of them to build a platform that matches their needs.”

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