Partnered With:

Explaining how encrypted art works: Take the SuperRare gallery as an example

Read this article in 20 Minutes

What is the difference between encrypted art and traditional art? Learn about its underlying technical principles.

Original title: "How does encryption change art?" "

Original author: Massimo Franceschet, Giovanni Colavizza, etc.

Translation: CryptoC

The concept of "crypto art" is on the rise. But what is "encrypted art"? Is it a reflection of contemporary art on the blockchain, or is it a work of art created with the theme of the encryption community, or is it a revolutionary movement in the art world? On this point, the industry and academia are not well defined.

As a research-oriented decentralized thought organization, Society C is pleased to translate the paper "Crypto Art: A decentralized View". This paper was completed in 2019. Its authors include art theory researchers in colleges and universities, encrypted artists, and founders of top encrypted art trading platforms. What is encrypted art, why encrypted art will become a trend, and what the encrypted art world needs to solve The issue was discussed in depth.

The authors of this paper include:

Massimo Franceschet , Data Science Researcher at the University of Udine ;

Giovanni Colavizza Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities, University of Amsterdam

T'ai Smith, Associate Professor of Art History and Media Theory, University of British Columbia, student Blake Finucane

Martin Lukas Ostachowski, Quebec geometric abstract artist, Canada

SuperRare.co co-founder Jonathan Perkins

Hackatao encryption artist Sergio Scalet

KnownOrigin.io co-founder James Mor

The following content is the first part of the paper, which mainly defines encryption art. By revealing the underlying technical principles and specific cases of encryption art, It shows the fundamental difference between encrypted art and traditional art.

Crypto art is rare digital art. More figuratively, it is limited edition collectible art that is cryptographically registered on the blockchain through tokens. Tokens mean the source and provenance of digital artworks are transparent and auditable; while blockchain technology enables tokens to be held and securely traded from one collector to another.

Digital galleries like SuperRare and KnownOrigin already showcase some rare digital artwork, both still and moving images. When the digital assets produced by the artist are added to the digital gallery, the smart contract will directly generate tokens and deposit them in the artist's wallet, and these tokens will be permanently linked with the artwork. This unique asset represents the ownership and authenticity of the underlying artwork.

Once the token is created, the artwork starts its life journey on a given blockchain, and fans or collectors can purchase art through tokens Artifacts, and can be exchanged, traded or held by collectors like other rare works of art. Typically, works of art can be sold through auctions: creators list the artwork they want to sell, bidders bid, the creator chooses to accept or reject the bid, and the sale ends. After the digital art assets are sold, the tokens will also be transferred directly to the buyer's wallet, while the corresponding cryptocurrency will be transferred to the seller's wallet. Thanks to blockchain, every transaction takes place on a peer-to-peer network and is protected by cryptography. This means that neither funds nor assets will be held by the gallery or any other third party.

Crypto art now rests on the shoulders of the blockchain. In the following, we briefly review this new technique. We then give a real-world example of an encrypted artwork workflow.

Blockchain technology

Blockchain is a cryptographic technology A distributed system that ensures an evolving consensus of economically valuable tokens. It's worth noting that this idea isn't new, it even dates back to 1991. Back then, cryptographers Haber and Stornetta proposed techniques for proving the date of documents and preventing tampering. They wrote in an abstract of the paper:

When all text, audio, picture and video documents are in easily modifiable digital form, the world will That raises a question for us: How do you authenticate when a document is created or when it was last changed? The answer to this question is to timestamp the data, not introduce an intermediary.

The ideas of Haber and Stornetta gave Satoshi Nakamoto sufficient inspiration. In 2008, he took the idea and created a cryptocurrency called Bitcoin (which is now very popular), an idea that had been ignored until now. The conclusion of Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper is very interesting, which reads:

We propose an electronic transaction system that does not rely on trust. [...] We propose a peer-to-peer network using Proof-of-Work to record a public history of transactions, if honest nodes control a majority of CPU power, then changing the record becomes computationally trivial for an attacker unrealistic. The Bitcoin network has unstructured simplicity and is therefore very robust.

More specifically, a blockchain is a chain of blocks in which is a data container. The simplest forms include:

The hash value of the current block, which is used to identify the block;

The hash value of the created block Timestamp;

Transaction List;

Hash of the previous (parent) block in the chain.

People use cryptographic hash functions to create block hashes. The function is a mathematical algorithm that maps data of arbitrary size to a fixed-size bit string (called a hash or digest). The hash is used to verify the information content of the block: modifying even one bit of the content completely changes the hash. Additionally, the current block digest is calculated based on previous block digests, meaning that changing one block invalidates all future blocks. Therefore, if a block is changed, not only its hash value needs to be modified, but also the hash values of all subsequent blocks need to be modified in order for the entire blockchain to be valid.

Hashing alone is not enough to prevent tampering, because the hash value can be quickly calculated by a computer. The proof-of-work algorithm controls how difficult it is to create new blocks. Blocks are created (or mined) by so-called miners. When a new block must be created, a hard computational problem that can only be attacked by brute force is sent to all potential miners. The first miner to solve the problem created the block and got the reward, so to modify a past block, the attacker would have to redo the proof-of-work for that block and all blocks after it, and then also catch up and surpass The work of honest nodes. However, as subsequent blocks increase, the likelihood of slower attackers catching up to honest nodes decreases exponentially.

Usually, the data field of a block contains a certain number of transactions. Every transaction has a sender, a receiver, a token from sender to receiver, and a transaction fee. A token is a quantified unit of value recorded on a blockchain (such as a certain cryptocurrency or a work of art). Transactions are stored in a pool of outstanding transactions. Each mined block includes the most profitable transaction (and also the transaction with the highest fee) among all pending transactions. Miners are rewarded with the sum of the transaction fees in the block plus additional cryptocurrency to compensate for the CPU time and energy required to perform the proof-of-work.

Rewarded tokens can help encourage nodes to stay honest. As Satoshi Nakamoto said in the white paper:

If a greedy attacker can gather more CPU computing power than all honest nodes, he will It has to choose to use this computing power to steal its payment funds to defraud others, or use this computing power to generate new tokens. He should find that obeying existing rules that benefit him more than anyone else combined, rather than undermining the effectiveness of the system and his own fortune, steals far more money from anyone else.

In the end, blockchain ledgers are all distributed on a peer-to-peer network. The steps to run the network are as follows:

New transactions are broadcast to all nodes;

Each node collects new transactions into a block;

Each node is looking for a difficult proof of work for its block;

After the node finds the proof of work, it broadcasts its block to all nodes;

A node only accepts a block if all of its transactions are valid and not yet spent;

A node creates the next block in the chain by using the accepted block hash as the previous hash A block to express acceptance of the block.

In short, the blockchain combines mathematics (cryptography), computer science (distributed systems), economics (the exchange of tokens with economic value) ), and politics (the mechanism for reaching consensus). Blockchain technology aims to replace our (usually) trust in intermediaries by creating an intelligent system that combines the objectivity of mathematics, the neutrality of algorithms, and the economic motivation of humans to follow the rules. Blockchain is not just a technology, it is a culture and community passionate about creating a fairer world through decentralization. As Bettina Warburg said in her TED Talk:

We are now entering a fundamental change that leverages interaction and transactions, Because this is the first time we can reduce uncertainty through political and economic institutions, as well as technology.

How Crypto Art Works

Crypto Art is a very recent art movement. In this field, artists often work closely with machines (not necessarily computers, but scanners, old Polaroids, or Polaroids) and distribute them using blockchain technology and the peer-to-peer Interplanetary File System (IPFS) network. Works are usually in the form of still images or animated images.

Sergio Scalet, one of the forerunners into crypto art and co-author of this article, discusses this trend The opinion is as follows:

Crypto art is one of the few art movements of this century that uses contemporary language. It uses a new language of digital expression to provide a fast, dynamic and tailored marketplace for a new generation of art collectors.

In the past, artists who created digital works had little opportunity to put their works on the market because they could be copied infinitely; Due to technology, these digital works have become certified rare edition creations, and thus have acquired exchangeable value. Encrypted artwork can still be copied infinitely and is visible to everyone, but only the buyer owns the original work created by the artist, a unique token of ownership of the work in question.

Obviously, collectors have to accept that owning a digital work means that what they are buying is not a physical work like it used to be that can be hung on a wall like a painting superior. While baby boomers may prefer art that associates texture with tactility, millennials have a much easier time grasping the concept of crypto art.

So, how does crypto art work? We will use the SuperRare gallery as an example.

Analysis of the working principle of encrypted art: taking SuperRare gallery as an example

Figure 1: SuperRare gallery exhibited works of encrypted artist HEX0x6C OSnal

Let's take a look at the work titled "O Snail" in Figure 1. The current work Exhibited in the encrypted art gallery SuperRare, the implication comes from an ancient Japanese poem haiku by Kobayashi Issa.

When an artist uploads an artwork in the SuperRare gallery, a transaction is created on the Ethereum chain. The transaction creates a token uniquely associated with the artwork and transfers it to the artist's cryptographic portfolio. Artists digitally sign transactions using asymmetric encryption to certify the authenticity of the work.

Galleries distribute artwork (JPEG images in this case) on IPFS's peer-to-peer network of nodes. The IPFS network uses a "unique code" that uniquely matches the content to name images. This means that even if this "unique code" is distributed across multiple nodes of the network, the same image will always have the same name and will be conceptually identified as a single resource (unlike the usual web we know)< /p>

IPFS and blockchain are a perfect match! With IPFS, you can handle large amounts of data and put immutable permanent links (time stamps and secure content) into blockchain transactions without having to put the data itself on-chain.

Digital artwork will be immortalized on the blockchain. Anyone can view it and potentially buy the artwork at a price set by the artist, often in Ethereum. At the time of purchase, the transaction is placed on the Ethereum blockchain: tokens tied to the artwork are credited to the buyer's account, and the agreed amount is transferred to the artist's account. Unlike traditional art auctions, even if these works of art are sold, they remain on the market and can continue to be traded.

In the traditional art market, once a work of art is bought from the artist, its subsequent transactions have nothing to do with the artist himself. In some encrypted art trading markets, the secondary market can always be related to the artist himself (for example, SuperRare will reward 10% of each transaction price of artwork to the original creator). You know, all these steps would have taken months or years in the traditional art market; now, thanks to blockchain technology, these steps can be done quickly and in an instant authenticated and secure manner.

As Jason Bailey stated in his presentation of the first Italian crypto art exhibition (Tolmezzo, December 2018-February 2019):

< p>

Unlike the traditional art world, (encrypted) artists do not seek gallerists, agents, auction houses or other "intermediaries" ” license to share and sell their work. Instead, they take advantage of the blockchain and make their own decisions to display the work and make it available. Naturally, traditional practitioners often talk about crypto art with sarcasm, but if history is any measure, this is certainly an important signal to set crypto artists on the right path.