Blockchain technology has been hyped to revolutionize a wide variety of industries; everything from financial services to healthcare, to mobile payments, and even global shipping. One of the interesting effects of this disruptive technology is the democratization of markets and industries via blockchain creating great opportunities for people who would not ordinarily have any.

The Fine Arts is next in line to be disrupted by Blockchain technology, which promises to revolutionize the age-old industry.

Creative individuals can now utilize what blockchain technology has to offer by leveraging new solutions and channels for commerce. Art, today is a 64 billion dollar industry globally that continues to grow, even as the overall market is non-standardised, the pricing is opaque, and the industry itself is unregulated. The above factors are essential attributes for any investment asset, and the lack of these attributes make the art industry susceptible to manipulation.

The entire Art industry consists of very few marketplaces and has been dominated for almost a century by auction houses, investment funds and private dealers. These entities act as middleman charging exorbitant fees of up to 40% for often what is a highly time-consuming process. It’s estimated that a majority of artwork today is sold through secretive Art dealers, whereas a small percentage of Artworks are sold at auctions. Given the rise of globalization, online sales have also driven demand and will continue to do so in the foreseeable according to analysts.

Decentralized Ecosystem Designed for Artists

It’s the norm for the ultra-rich to serve as the Art industries biggest clients, but Blockchain technology enables the opportunity to make the industry more relevant to those that are not classed as high-net-worth individuals.

By making it possible for small retail investors to invest in Fine Art collectibles, such as paintings, sculptures, jewelry & antique furniture. In reality, for those other than the rich, buying art is gambling in an illiquid and shady realm dominated by a handful of players who are almost guaranteed to know more than you. Quartz claims that the Fine Art industry is one of the most manipulated markets in the world, this means pairing the arts with Blockchain could provide a solution fix some of the problems that exist in the industry today.

The whole idea behind blockchain technology is that it’s based on Trust & Transparency. Essentially, all the data recorded on a blockchain is available to the general public and anything that is processed can be seen and validated by the entire Network of participants. With a number of new services like Factom that specialize in Data management, Voise as a decentralized music platform, and a wide of variety of other Altcoins that have tailor-made solutions for different markets, the most interesting project of all for the Art industry right now is ArtWallet.

We have projects that plan to serve realtors, musicians & gamers but ArtWallet is fine-tuning a Blockchain platform for Artists where artists are given the ability to tokenize their works of art, verify provenance of their artwork and store provenance data on-chain, and ultimately buy, sell and trade tokens that represent fractional ownership of various blue-chip art masterpieces.

ArtWallet is a unique concept created with the goal of delivering a complete end-to-end solution, making it one of the world’s first blockchain-based fine art investment platforms that streamlines the entire process. By providing a Wallet client, art tokenization platform, and a decentralized Art Exchange to transact tokens, ArtWallet offers a holistic solution for the art industry. Investors can own a small share of a masterpiece, whereas Artists can raise capital by hosting an “Initial Art Offering” auction through a peer-to-peer Marketplace.

The Future of the Digital Art Industry

‘’Creators, producers & designers of Fine Art today are frustrated with the current state of the market and its inefficiencies, but the tokenization of artworks and the removal of barriers to entry may just change that.’’

There are 2 unique propositions that a Blockchain-based solution has to offer the Art industry;

Initial Art Offering (IAO)

The ArtWallet platform will allow artists to raise money and retain a portion of their Artwork by issuing out tokens that can be freely traded amongst buyers and sellers. These tokens will be traded through the ARTex exchange, a decentralized marketplace that gives artists and investors the opportunity to profit from the price and value appreciation of an artwork.

Authenticity and Data Integrity

Provenance is crucial when it comes to collecting art and highly valued collectibles. If you claim to own a Picasso painting and have no knowledge or record of its history, you are going to have a hard time when it comes to selling it. Not having a record of the ownership history for a masterpiece often raises suspicion that it could be stolen or fake, hence a public distributed ledger can be used to trace the transfer of ownership over a period of time, and serve as a decentralized database securing provenance data and other important information related to artworks.

Disrupting the art industry is a real potential use case for Blockchain technology but what’s so interesting about solutions like ArtWallet is that individuals who may have never planned to purchase fine arts can now do so. Whether they would want to diversify their investment portfolios, they can now consider owning Fine Art due to reduced barriers of entry. It is also possible that they merely want to own and collect masterpieces given that they are now able to for the first time.

The art world is set to face radical changes in the upcoming decades as technology encroaches into this space. Ambitious projects such as ArtWallet could truly revolutionize the art industry.

It’s great to discover a strong use case for Blockchain, the concept behind ArtWallet will pave way to a generation of new Cryptocurrencies and decentralized marketplaces to connect buyers and sellers of Fine Art like never before. We at the CryptoHype team are excited that Blockchain tech is being utilized to serve a stagnant industry and believe that solutions like ArtWallet will be favored by millions of Artists interested in reaching out to a global audience of like-minded investors and fans.