Well before cryptocurrencies and NFTs began to proliferate this spring, Carly Rector was already upset about their use for digital art sales.
Rector, who is himself a digital artist and former senior engineer at Amazon, believed that it was unnecessary to use energy-intensive blockchain ledgers to help artists make a living.
So she turned the model on its head.
Rector launched CO2ign Art, pronounced “cosine art,” where artists can sell electronic files of their work that contain a digital signature that verifies who made it and who bought it. The sale also includes a documented purchase of carbon offsets from Verra Carbon Standards, a long-standing source of greenhouse gas removals tracked in a public registry.
Rector’s pitch to artists: “Instead of actively harming the environment by making your art, you’ll be able to help it.”
Rector left Amazon last year after more than 13 years at the Seattle-based company. She spent about six months building the CO2ign Art platform, which launched in February.
The rector has stopped the project so far and plans to pursue venture capital in the autumn. The startup has seven employees; she and two others are in Seattle and the rest are in California and Florida. The Rector has applied for a provisional patent on the website’s technology.
CO2ign Art currently has more than 100 artists. Before accepting new artists, the startup verifies that they have followers on social media and create their own works. Most of the art is digital, but some pieces are digitized versions of physical artwork.
On 29 July, the platform will host its first livestream event where five artists will create works in real time over nine hours.
The least expensive art on the site is offered for $20, while the high-end pieces cost hundreds of dollars, although most works are well under $100. Half of the sales goes to the purchase of carbon credits, 30% goes to the artist and 20% to the platform.
While that may sound like a small cut for creators, on platforms like Redbubble or ArtStation, the percentage is often even smaller, Rector said.
NFT or “non-fungible token” sales caught fire last year as a long-sought strategy to help digital artists monetize their work. Part of the appeal of using the blockchain was that every time the work was sold and resold, the exchange was recorded on a public blockchain ledger – mostly Etherium – and the artist was paid a fraction of each additional sale.
But the reality, said the principal, is that few pieces are actually sold several times. The CO2ign Art platform is set up for one-time sales only. Transactions are made in US dollars and facilitated by Stripe.
The NFT approach quickly sparked controversy due to its carbon impact. Each NFT sale uses energy as it is recorded on the blockchain and the purchases are made using cryptocurrencies. Many blockchains, including Etherium and Bitcoin, use significant amounts of electricity due to their data requirements. Digiconomist currently estimates Etherium’s annual carbon footprint to be roughly equal to the nation of Hong Kong. Blockchain proponents counter that all online activity uses energy.
In addition to helping the environment, CO2ign Art has another benefit, Rector said: the buyer receives an actual digital file of the artwork. The work may be printed or displayed on electronic devices. The platform plans to build features that allow users to display their purchases in virtual galleries.
With an NFT, on the other hand, the buyer typically gets an external link where the art itself can be found. But anyone who has surfed the internet for more than five minutes knows that links don’t last forever.
“This link can change at any time, or disappear and you only own a broken link,” said the principal. “It’s a real thing that’s happened, people paid millions of dollars for something with a broken link.”
Both CO2ign Art and NFT sales cross material and immaterial worlds. The blockchain is digital. The art is virtual but can be printed or displayed. The carbon credits are promises from third parties to finance projects such as planting forests that lead to the removal of invisible, environmentally harmful carbon dioxide molecules.
But the difference between her approach and NFTs, the principal said, is meaningful.
“Every purchase [on CO2ign Art] funds its own unique set of carbon credits,” she said. “It has its own real thing associated with it — and not just a token on the blockchain.”
