I. Chinese Platform Study

A. Primary Market

1. BCA

MetaOpus
  • Chinese friendly, Chinese artist > English
  • 500+ Artists, 80k users. Start from 5.2021
  • Acution: 大悲宇宙,张知微
  • Artists development, like MCN media, cooporate with emerging artist
  • Model: 2/8, no gas fee
MetaOpus homepage
Virtual Niche Have you ever seen memes in the mirror?
  • The world’s first Cryptoart exhibition
  • Featured works include Robert Alice’s “Portraits of a mind”, the first ever NFT artwork sold by Christie’s auction house. In addition, 20 works by artist, Beeple will make their first ever debut appearance in China.
  • Aim to showcase artists using blockchain technology as a medium for creating dialogue and connection between the institutional art world and the crypto community.
Virtual Niche exhibition post
BCA Gallery
  • Online (wechat program) and in-person exhibition (pop-up)
BCA Gallery wechat program screenshot

2. NFTcn

Service
  • Mint
  • promotion
  • Trading
    • Put on SuperRare, Rarible … 
    • Characteristic service 
      • All Chinese
      • No background knowledge needed
      • No digital wallet needed
Process of submitting works
  • Application
  • Waiting for customer service contacting
  • Upload works
  • Waiting for the buyer or send it as a gift to collector
  • Sold
    • 10% commission fee
    • RMB & Cryptocurrency accepted 
Chinese only problems solving
  • Not familiar with blockchain, digital wallets, etc.
  • No need to understand blockchain, digital wallets, etc.
  • Not familiar with how to generate NFT works on overseas NFT platforms
  • Simultaneous sale of overseas NFT platforms
  • Lack of exposure and no trading volume after the works are on the chain
  • Intelligent matching of potential collectors after the work is on the chain
  •  No IP targeting
  • Collective promotion makes it easier to be discovered by overseas collectors
  • “Expensive” gas fee (around $250)
  • No casting gas fee (only ¥300 manual review fee is required for the first review. If the review fails, a full refund will be issued.)

3. Pinmujian

  • Start from March 2021, focused on digital art, but similar model as Cryoto art trading.

II. English Platform Study

A. Primary Market

1. SuperRare

  • Require submission (couple weeks)
    • Portfolio required
  • Aim to be the curated single edition rare artwork place
    • To be like the instagram meets Christie’s
  • Great user interface and diligently updating
  • Repost very often on social with their artists having news or releases
  • One of the premier places
superrare.com homepage
SuperRare Editorial page

2. MakersPlace

  • Curated
    • Require submission
    • Curation seems to be more broader than other platforms
    • Variety of artistic styles
  • To empower digital creators with creating a marketplace to sell their creations
  • Having issues with artist plagiarism
  • Credit card available
makersplace.com homepage

3. Rarible

  • Community owned  platform
    • Open to everyone, a trash and treasure of crypto art space – a flea market
      • All sorts of trash
      • Definitely treasures if you know what you’re looking for
    • Wide audience
      • Difficulty to get discovered if not verified
      • even got verified ticked couldn’t get discovered organically when posting
    • Possibly looking for bargains
      • Not the high end of crypto art market
      • But may be worth trying out to get feet wet selling
  • Copyright infringement and plagiarism
rarible.com homepage

4. Nifty Gateway

  • Invitation only
    • Scheduled artist drop events
  • To make NFT art accessible to everyone
    • Platform teaming with top artists to make quality limited edition drops with hype releases
      • Name an upcoming artist and the date then spread the hype
      • Only available for a short time
      • Often sell out within minutes or seconds
      • Then they have a secondary marketplace 
  • Curator’s collection 
    • Artists could recommended by creators 
niftygateway.com homepage

5. OpenSea

  • Catch-all mothership for digital collectibles like eBay
opensea.io homepage

6. Async

  • With programmable digital art that can evolve or change over time
async.art homepage

7. Foundation

foundation.app homepage

8. hic et nunc

hicetnunc.xyz homepage

Reflective Writing: General Impression

So far I interviewed 31 people, including my friends, my teachers, and strangers I’ve never met. Some are short conversations, some are longer than we exchanged opinions. 74% of them had no idea about this topic, and most of them stand that “all I’ve seen is negative stuff about how it affects the environment”, or strongly believe that current crypto art is not about art, it’s all about cryptocurrency, this will fade away soon.

I agree with what they said, like NFT is hurting the environment, the artwork is not “art” enough. Also the instability, we don’t know if the NFT would disappear tomorrow like the Chinese government banned Bitcoin today, or it just would be abandoned by the public’s choice. But nothing you will know about the future. Everything fades away, but NFT is happening, Crypto Art is booming, and I think this is interesting. 

The NFT workers are resolving the environmental issues, we could invite more great artists into the world. We could build something different.

What-Why-How-What If

What

My research aims to investigate the potential of raising awareness with Digital Artists in China to build a prosperous community that promotes excellent artwork in the Crypto Art world. So my question How can I bring Chinese artists into the Crypto world.

Why

From the viewpoints of artists, gallerists and collectors, decentralisation and individual control are the emerging themes in the NFT world.

From the commercial point of view, NFT technology greatly reduces transaction costs and friction, making production, trading and storage all happen in the virtual world, and the whole process is smoother and more natural. And the blockchain can change the way we transmit Crypto art and obtain information, thereby affecting the art itself.

Lastly, in my perspective, as an art lover and a digital native, I was trapped in a well-established traditional art industry were fulfilled with sophisticated artists, gallerists and collectors, but Crypto art is an emerging market where I see a lot of potentials forward, and there are so many possibilities to link the digital artists and the crypto world from my vantage point.

How

In my case, it is a challenge for me to reach out to different types of stakeholders. For example, the digital artists who are not involved with Crypto art may have no idea about it yet, then there is a space for me to share the news and ideas to lead a way where they can easily approach it. And for those who believe Crypto art is monetary art and said a no to it, it is important for me to engage with these artists and get their opinions to see what I can deal with. Also, for artists from different levels, for people who manage the tradings, who buy the artworks, and the critics and historians, there might be different ways to get in touch with them, to gain their attention. For now, I will run a social media platform or a website to share the information and invite people to have a talk about Crypto art and to build my own brand that could team up with artists and workers later.

What-If

The Crypto art industry is innocent as a child, which I could tell from the quality of the artworks and art criticisms today. Therefore I would like to integrate the excellent digital artists and the Crypto world and marry the strong point of traditional art with the emerging Crypto industry. There is a necessity to redefine the superior and serious artworks owing to the current monetary scenario of the artwork and making them flow into the art market. In addition, Crypto art only exhibits in the fiction world at present, which I think there should be a physical space for displaying them in museums or galleries. In general, I would like to help Crypto art developing more healthily in the long term, instead of just another tulip manila.

Bibiliography

Hameed, S. and Farooq, S., 2016. The Art of Crypto Currencies. International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 7(12).

Hickey, D. and Friedman, J., n.d. Wasted words. 1st ed. Los Angeles,California : PCP Press, 2016.

Massimo Franceschet, Giovanni Colavizza, T’ai Smith, Blake Finucane, Martin Lukas Ostachowski, Sergio Scalet, Jonathan Perkins, James Morgan, Sebástian Hernández; Crypto art: A decentralized view. Leonardo 2020; doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_a_02003

Colon, F, Kim, C, Kim H, and Kim W (2021) ‘The effect of political and economic uncertainty on the cryptocurrency market’, Finance Research Letters. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1544612320301707 (Accessed: 13 May 2021).

The Change I Want to See

Traditional Chinese Artists

in the Crypto World

What is Crypto Art

Cryptoart is art that uses blockchain technology in its creation and/or distribution.

Tokens represent a transparent, auditable origin and provenance for a piece of digital art. 

Crypto art draws its origins from conceptual art: sharing the immaterial and distributive nature of artworks, the tight blending of artworks with currency, and the rejection of conventional art markets and institutions. 

The Box of Uncertainties: Part One

Contents

Page 1: Hypothesis of “Uncertainty” and “Box” (started from my surroundings)

Page 2: A metaphor of “box” and “uncertainty”- fennel, and my methodology to figure it out

Page 3: A review of what I had learnt from the attempt so far

Page 4: My real passion, and the relevant reading

Page 5: A lovely poet that I’d like to share and the reference