Art broker Sotheby’s introduces its curated P2P NFT marketplace
Monday 1 May, one of the world’s largest art brokers, Sotheby’s, announced its new, curated NFT marketplace through the auction house Sotheby’s Metaverse. According to the company’s Tweet, this will be an on-chain peer-to-peer marketplace through Ethereum and Polygon.
Sotheby’s Metaverse Offers New On-Chain NFT Marketplace
One of the world’s largest art brokers, Sotheby’s, announced on Monday that its web3-focused auction house is getting its secondary NFT marketplace. Sotheby’s Metaverse will now offer chain sales of selected non-fungible tokens. Transactions will be conducted through the Ethereum and Polygon blockchains.
Featuring a rotating, curated selection of leading artists hand-picked by Sotheby’s specialists, providing expert guidance and context for each work, from thematic presentations to artist spotlights, for an easy-to-navigate experience designed for discovery.
Additionally, according to the announcement, it is set to be curated, and peer-to-peer. Sotheby’s Metaverse will also honor artist royalties directly through smart contracts on the chain. The marketplace will also have a seller’s fee of 2.5%. Already at launch, the platform will offer pieces by 13 prominent artists.
Sotheby’s was established in London in 1744. The company took an interest in non-fungible tokens and founded its web3-focused Sotheby’s Metaverse as early as 2021 near the height of the popularity of non-fungible tokens. Despite the relative decline in interest throughout the “crypto winter” of 2022, the company has remained committed to its digital collectibles business.
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NFTs are increasingly seen as cultural artefacts
Considering its century-long prominence in the art world, Sotheby’s engagement with non-fungible tokens certainly lends credence to their claim to be cultural artifacts. In addition, the broker has become increasingly active in the area and, just weeks ago, announced a multi-stage auction of various blue-chip NFTs in its possession.
In recent months, non-fungible tokens have increasingly found their way to major museums. Earlier this year Refik Anadol, one of the 13 creators whose work will be shown at the launch of Sotheby’s new marketplace, exhibited his “Unsupervised” collection at the famous Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
Recent months have also seen several important moves towards preserving non-fungible tokens as important cultural artifacts. Since November 2022, Yuga and Larva Labs have been running the “Punks Legacy Project” and have already donated some notable NFTs to Paris’ Center Pompidou. More recently, an influencer known on Twitter as Cozomo de Medici donated a 22-piece collection to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).
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Do you think non-fungible tokens should be considered important cultural artifacts and works of art? Let us know in the comments below.
About the author
Tim Fries is the co-founder of The Tokenist. He has a B. Sc. in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan, and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Tim served as a Senior Associate in the investment team at RW Baird’s US Private Equity division and is also a co-founder of Protective Technologies Capital, an investment firm specializing in sensing, protection and control solutions.
