Cover Story - Blank.art

Blank.art is a decentralized platform for artists and collectors of digital art powered by blockchain technology and smart contracts. The platform helps collectors and art lovers to discover and collect NFTS. It already hosted the launch of important artists collections such as Matt Kane and Sarah Zucker.

NFTS AND WEB3: BeyOnd the Aesthetic Value

In the last few centuries, artworks have been sold following the same methodology. The traditional art market was made by curators, museums, galleries, collectors, and artists. Today, something is changing. In the Web3 era, this equilibrium is changing - artists are free to produce and sell artworks directly to collectors; galleries are replaced by platforms; curators are replaced by the community. But what is happening? We have asked a few questions to Guido Mologni - co-founder of Blank.art.

What makes NFT valuable?

Nowadays people tend to consider aesthetic value as the most important factor when purchasing an NFT. Actually, successful artists and projects have proven that the real value goes beyond an artistic one. NFTs open new opportunities with a new mechanism of interactions between artists, collectors, curators and the Web3 players. In the traditional fine art world, the value was set by galleries, museums and big collectors. On the contrary, in Web3 we have new paradigms. Artists like Pak, Matt Kane, and Beeple are successful because they understand this is a new game with new rules. They understand the importance of followers, smartcontract mechanisms, community, trust, co-ownerships, decentralization, scarcity, etc. It is a new world with new rules. NFTs are some sort of social media, they connect the buyer to new possibilities.

Can the NFTs re-shape the concept of social networks?

NFTs are a new way to connect with your audience and your community of followers, giving you new opportunities for engagement. Web3 is a new virtual world without boundaries, open and accessible to everyone. In this system, people are connected through digital identities and the sense of belonging to a community has proven to be fundamental. Blockchain is creating new virtual communities, made of artists, collectors, crypto lovers and passionate individuals. If the real world is less global, the Web3 is becoming the new globalised virtual world.

Matt Kane - Gazers

We have heard and talked about Collection and Digital Art but what do Art NFT and 10k NFT really mean?

What does 10K NFT mean? It refers to the total number of an NFT Collection - 10.000 pieces of unique tokens which are represented most of the time by digital artworks. Examples of famous collections are Crypto Punks, Bored Ape YC, and Doodles. What gives value to the collection is the limited supply and the unique design each token carries. In fact, each NFT of the collection is unique, in terms of style and design, and carries different traits, such as colour, shape, and attributes. The rarity of each token is important because it is a factor that determines the price. Some collections, though, deliver different kinds of value. The Bored Ape YC collection, for instance, has become very popular because of conferring membership in an online community. The project has grown exponentially due to the high popularity of the community members, and also due to the exclusive benefits the ownership offer, such as access to private events, merchandise and even yacht parties.

Instead, if we talk about Art NFT, we see a new wave of artists who are reshaping the traditional Art World with new technology that enables new ways of getting paid, registering and trading. Artists are now able to control their productions, decide the price, receive royalties and trade artworks with proven authenticity.

Pak - The Fungible

Can you give us a brief history of NFT art?

The very first piece of NFT art is considered been created in 2014 by Kevin McCoy and Anil Dash through the network of NameCoin. In the same year, Robert Dermody, Adam Krellenstein and Evan Wagner founded Counterparty, an opensource internet protocol built on top of Bitcoin Blockchain. Counterparty was groundbreaking because it allows for the creation of assets and NFTs by users. In 2015, we saw the born of Spells of Genesis and Force of Will, the first two NFT blockchain games. A year later in October 2016, the rapid emergence of the Rare Pepe project, which is considered by many, the beginning of the Crypto art movement. In July 2017, John Watkinson and Matt Hall launched Cryptopunks - the first 10k NFT collection generated on the Ethereum blockchain. All 10k Cryptopunks were freely claimable and available to be traded on blockchain in the following days. A few months after, in October 2017, a Canadian company named Axiom Zen (named after Dapper Labs), launched Cryptokitties - a blockchain game which became so popular, that it caused one of the first congestion of the Ethereum network in December 2017. In the following months and 2018, we saw the emergence of the first marketplaces, such as OpenSea, SuperRare, MakersPlace and KnownOrigin.

Sarah Zucker - Mocking Sun

Can you offer a few examples of prominent social NFT Projects.

I think Matt Kane and Pak are two of the major artists in the NFT community. Matt Kane is one of the most well-known crypto artists active from the early beginning. In 2021, he created Gazers - a unique collection of 1000 pieces living on Ethereum Blockchain. Each piece has origins of the Moon’s phase and is connected to the lunar calendar. Every day at midnight, each layer and colour receives new instructions on how to rise and shine over the next 24 hours: a living piece of artwork built to coincide with our physical living space. As stated by the artist: “Gazers seek to create a community of collectors celebrating the change of our perceptions that happen over time, our collective goals in crypto and our love colour theory, astronomy and generative art”.

Pak is a pioneer artist active for more than two decades in the digital world. Some of his projects such as The Fungible Collection and The Merge have fetched world record results. He has pushed boundaries in creating new NFT tokens which engage his audience through scarcity, FOMO (fear of missing out) and customised token mechanism. In his works, the audience becomes part of the performance; without the community, most of his works may not exist.

These two artists are just an example of how today NFTs are making art not only more valuable but also more accessible. In the near future, the traditional market and the Web3 will probably merge in some way, creating new opportunities for creators, collectors and their communities.