Why We Like Crypto Art Over Physical Art

Original title: "Why Do We Like Encrypted Art Over Physical Art?" "

Original source: CryptoC

Editor's Note: This article is the paper "Crypto Art: A decentralized View" The fourth part of , which is also the last part of our series of translated articles. As the essence of the paper, this article has a huge amount of information. It not only makes a highly concise summary of the advantages, pioneering and innovative nature of encryption art, but also makes a summary of the current problems that need to be discussed and solved in the encryption art ecology. detailed combing. In addition, this paper gives a preliminary idea for one of the most critical issues - the pricing model of encrypted art.

Traditional artists who want to step into encrypted art but have doubts, as well as those who want to invest and Friends who start a business can read this article repeatedly, and they will definitely gain something in the end. After the translation of this paper is completed, Club C will also launch a series of online dialogues with artists and write related comments on encryption art, so stay tuned.

The specific translation is as follows:

01 Why do we prefer encrypted art?

Encrypted art gives true digital ownership of works of art, which means that anyone can carry the entire collection anytime, anywhere, and can also Give it to anyone on earth. Hosting artwork will also become easier.

Owning and presenting animations just got easier. In the physical world, it's easy to own a painting and display it on a collector's wall, but not so easy to display a 48-frame animated artwork. But both works can be done in a virtual reality world (although resolution and file size limitations can be troublesome).

The primary and secondary markets are fully observable, transparent, never-ending, and No trust from either party is required.

Like all ERC-721 tokens, crypto art is programmable. These tokens can be atomically swapped in pairs or used as collateral for loans.

Anyone can bid on any crypto art at any time, no need to place an item for sale.

Artists can be provably programmatically compensated for appropriate secondary sales.

With smart contract platforms, counterfeiting is impossible (although proving the authenticity of artwork remains a challenge) .

02 The core issue of encrypted artwork pricing

As collectors, we have been establishing a pricing model for encrypted art, which inevitably involves various issues about encrypted art. Relevant aspects include:

Are the creators real, or are they just bots stealing content from other platforms? To do this, we usually use their social network, network status, and the kind of content they have published so far as a reference to judge this question. This information comes from the open market, which means the market itself can do the checks for us (e.g. a "verified creator" badge).

Is the artwork original and has never been tagged on another platform? We currently have no easy solution to this problem. Finally, it is necessary to establish a reputation system that is not only free from each trading market, but also covers all trading markets.

Assuming the creators are real people, are they well-known artists? How do we know if an artist is being faked? In some cases, we have reached out to the artist via email to confirm their identity and that the digital work has not been misused.

Art quality. For still images, we can use their physical equivalents to assess their quality. For animated productions, there are some other elements that can be used to evaluate the quality of the production, such as the nature of each frame, perfect loops, annotated frames, transitions between frames, timing of elements in the scene, etc.

Is it suitable for a virtual reality gallery? For animation works, what we care about is whether there are strong flickering, suitable rhythm, and appropriate colors.

Social metrics (views and likes). This is not a very strong indicator.

The total number of works of the artist. There is also a problem if there are too many works, as this can seriously detract from the connoisseur's experience.

The starting price, time and current bidding history.

The current state of the crypto art market. What's the starting bid these days? How many bidders are there on average?

Current Ether market conditions in terms of Ether tokens. This is not really necessary if the market allows bids and sales denominated in stablecoins (as of May 2019, only OpenSea allows this). Stablecoins are ERC-20 tokens designed to track the value of tangible assets. A famous example is the MakerDAO team’s DAI, which is pegged to the U.S. dollar (1 DAI = 1 USD).  

Historical sales data for artists, especially on the secondary market.  

Quality of NFT providers/marketplaces. For example, if the SuperRare.co market is closed, we will still retain ownership of the NFT, which also means we need to rely on secondary markets (such as OpenSea) to view and trade our collectibles.

In addition to the art pricing model, we are constantly evaluating the systemic risk of encrypted art investment. In particular, we need to focus on the popularity of NFTs (relevant use cases include games, collectibles, artwork, virtual real estate), and the development of the underlying blockchain Ethereum. In fact, in the points mentioned above, many data need to be extracted manually. Having access to a cryptocurrency art analysis platform will allow us to better price and manage investments.

03 Encryption art needs attention next

From the standpoint of decentralization of crypto art, we divide the ongoing and future work into the following areas:

Understanding Arts Development;

Values Engagement and Community;

Economics;

Blockchain technology and application analysis.

Understanding crypto art movement and value

T'ai Smith and Blake Finucane are two scholars who know the crypto art movement well, and their crypto art provides much-needed historical and critical depth. The duo discovered that while the fusion of blockchain technology and digital art is somewhat new, there are still some precedents to consider and understand. In this regard, crypto-art offers scholars a compelling entry point to examine issues of art, technology, and socioeconomic systems in the digital industry.

The value and phenomenon of encrypted art are closely related to the value represented by blockchain technology. In the words of SuperRare gallerist Jonathan Perkins, crypto art is “new thinking in an ancient realm.”

From the perspective of artists, gallerists and collectors, decentralization, democratization and personal control are all Very interesting topic of crypto art.

From an artist’s point of view, crypto art represents a way to gain and maintain control over their work, and ways to obtain related benefits. Not all encrypted artwork value will be realized. For example, in the verification and authentication of artists and works of art centered on galleries, these transactions are not realized. James Morgan of KnownOrigin and artist Martin Lukas Ostachowski have discussed this issue before.

Participation and Community

As an art phenomenon, encrypted art is now attracting more and more potential artists and collectors, and its influence includes but is not limited to the encrypted community.

Artists and gallerists alike have made this point unequivocally, finding that the community of peers and customers in the art space is very supportive of crypto. Art generated much interest and appreciation. Artists Martin Lukas Ostachowski and Sergio Scalet from Hackatao, both exemplify how crypto art has allowed them to explore art with unprecedented speed and freedom across physical and digital industries. If we take this into account, the space that crypto art can explore is still very large.

As T'aiSmith and Blake Finucane point out, crypto artists are currently more focused on relatively traditional Rectangular images and GIF formats. But in fact, encrypted art can provide artists with opportunities to interact with new partners in the digital art field and attract new buyers, while gallery owners can continuously improve and enhance their platform services through interaction with the community.

For Jonathan Perkins, the biggest opportunity in crypto art right now is design An exchange that serves art transactions and promotes art circulation. In terms of transparency, provenance, liquidity, social signals, and online collection management, the exchange will try its best to provide users with a perfect experience, and at the same time gain benefits, and mature the collectors of the entire encrypted art market.

Although the current encrypted art is only created in the digital field, its external form is not the same as that of traditional digital art Nothing different, but there has been a revolution in communication and experience. Collector Sebasti´an Hern´andez gave a convincing example — Decentraland, an art exhibition platform in a virtual reality world.

Encrypted art criticism system

Encrypted art is usually It is positioned as an alternative to traditional art, but when exploring its form, we noticed that it tends to be expressed as a two-dimensional rectangular picture (such as painting) that follows academic logic. Because the work can be viewed on a screen on a computer, phone, or tablet, many encrypted artworks feature vibrant colors and are often more focused, large, and bold images.

As far as we know, few crypto art practitioners currently participate in the implicit value system of the blockchain, Use the relevant principles of the blockchain and the token distribution mechanism to carry out artistic creation. But Plantoid is an exception. In the future, there may be more works of art in this area.

The world of cryptocurrencies takes anonymity very seriously. Anonymity allows everyone to express their opinions without threshold and participate in comments on encrypted art, while the traditional art industry pays more attention to the reputation of the author. But anonymity can also prompt people to deny responsibility for specific actions or choices. Art in general requires precisely a position that the artist or critic takes and is responsible for. Without historical and critical reflection, crypto art may even be at risk of extinction.

With this issue in mind, we advocate the inclusion of a rational system of "criticism" in the world of crypto art, which would Providing a semantic space for dialogue, qualitative judgment, and criticism, this system may be deployed on the blockchain.

Crypto-Art Economic Analysis

For almost all For contributors, the economics of crypto art are critical.  

For artists, encrypted art provides a way to directly sell their artworks without intermediaries and at high speed The way. This is especially important for artists like Martin Lukas Ostachowski. It is because of this property that crypto art offers unprecedented possibilities for new artists.

Art scholars T』ai Smith and Blake Finucane discuss the immediate economic incentives for crypto art, noting that crypto art is sometimes There will be unintended consequences. In a turning point in history, encrypted art finally "materialized" Duchamp, while conceptual artists tried to get rid of material objects in order to subvert the traditional art market.

According to data scientists, crypto art creates a faster marketplace for digital artefacts, making crypto Art transactions are in some ways similar to financial transactions. Perhaps due to the increasing speed at which artworks are released and the relative lack of control, the major challenge for crypto artists today is art hyperinflation (point presented by Sergio Scalet) or over-tokenization (pointed out by Martin LukasOstachowski) the opinion of).

Once a large number of new works of art flood into the market, users and buyers will In fact, there is not enough time to experience, digest and finally buy. Hyperinflation will not only depress prices, but also prevent encrypted art from appearing in the secondary market. Next, third parties and process parties may make suggestions on this issue, as will Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) and Token Custody Registries (TCRs).

Blockchain Technology and Applications

Although crypto art uses encryption technology, one thing is also understood at present: the crypto art movement has not yet fully utilized and tapped the potential of blockchain technology and value systems.

The issue of how to use cryptocurrencies has attracted the attention of relevant parties, but cryptocurrencies are highly volatile and will As a result, the behavior of the market, especially collectors, is more difficult to analyze and predict. Martin Lukas Ostachowski and Sebasti´an Hern´andez discuss this issue, and they argue that lock-in pricing mechanisms and the adoption of stablecoins These issues may be improved.

Another striking example is the lack of interoperability between galleries which Different standards are used for identification. For example, the current secondary market basically limits the internal transactions of galleries.

Additionally, there is a forgery verification issue within the scope of the CryptoArt system. In this case, solutions for the entire crypto art world may require the help of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and token custody registries (TCRs). System-wide interoperability could allow encrypted artwork to be reused outside the system, as well as the creation of third-party services. For example, Sebastian Hearn Anders proposed the creation of a cryptoart analysis platform.

A cryptographic art analysis platform first needs to collect data from different galleries; or require these galleries to adopt a common standard to program to disclose relevant data. In the future, it is also necessary for us to develop useful encrypted art indicators for different users of the platform (such as artists, collectors, gallerists, and even spectators). This is also the future work direction proposed by data scientists Massimo Franceschet and Giovanni Colavizza.

Furthermore, the opening up of encrypted art data, or "environments," will eventually allow data scientists to Model and predict whether individual artworks and artists will be successful in the future. Encrypted art trading platforms can provide artwork data (images and metadata), transaction data (bids and sales), and social data (number of likes and views), so it can provide us with a successful mechanism for studying the art and creative industries. This may be an unprecedented initiative.

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