Blockchain To Change World of Fine Arts As We Know It
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Issues of provenance, copyright and authentication may soon become a thing of the past, if a art plus blockchain revolutionary technology is adopted as quickly by the art world as it has been by the financial sector.
And it is not just Silicon Valley hype; art start-ups are already finding real-world applications for blockchain, the technology behind the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. While Bitcoin has recently had its struggles with internal disputes and a reputation for enabling drug deals, blockchain is emerging as the software with the most significant impact.
A blockchain essentially acts as a public database on which art plus blockchain are permanently recorded. It is also highly secure: When accessed, an immutable trail is left behind. In other words, blockchain technology eliminates the need for a trusted third party to verify that a transaction has taken place. The financial sector—from major banks such as UBS and Deutsche Bank to the Nasdaq stock art plus blockchain been quick to adopt the nascent technology, largely for its capacity to radically drop transaction costs.
But other sectors are seeing the potential too. In the art world, blockchain technology may hold the key to overcoming one of its greatest challenges: Frequently described as the last unregulated market, the art world often operates on trust alone.
But this trust keeps being tested, as recent forgery scandals such as the Knoedler Gallery fiasco and the case of German forger Wolfgang Art plus blockchain show. But this would require the trade to adopt the new technology, which it may be slow to do. Ascribe, for example, offers artists a platform for uploading their digital works, securing their attribution and selling them. Meanwhile, the Silicon Valley-based start-up Blockai is art plus blockchain to democratise access to copyright protection.
The platform allows artists to claim copyright on their work instantaneously and shows them where it is being used. Blockai also acts as a fraud deterrent. Other art-related blockchain companies include Verisart, founded by Robert Norton, the former chief executive officer of Sedition and Saatchi Online, which assigns certificates of authenticity to works of art. The art pricing database Artprice also launched a art plus blockchain project in May. Digital art, however, only makes up a small proportion of the art market.
The art plus blockchain coup would be to bridge the gap between physical art and blockchain. George McDonaugh, a blockchain entrepreneur, offers a solution by combining it with tagging technology. A missing chainmark could reveal that a work has been tampered with. Alternatively, fresh canvases could also be tagged with a chainmark.
You could have the choice art plus blockchain a blockchainable canvas that attributes it to you forever, or just a regular one. For all the excitement the new technology is generating, many believe that the dangers of running a decentralised art plus blockchain are not fully understood.
Blockchain is particularly terrifying because it has such profound implications for governance, identity and global supply chains. It art plus blockchain also organising regular workshops on the topic, has released a film titled Change Everything For Ever and is due art plus blockchain publish a related book that will be uploaded onto a blockchain. Artists are finding ways of cutting through some of the incomprehensible language around blockchain technology and making the topic visually engaging.
The show, which is a sequel to his display at the Berlin Biennale, looks at three major blockchain companies through the lens of the world-conquering board art plus blockchain. It at least has a utopian bent to it. Whether the mainstream art art plus blockchain embraces blockchain technology remains to be seen.
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