Netgear teams up with SuperRare for NFT digital art displays

Netgear is using its Meural digital displays to showcase non-fungible token (NFT) art, and now Netgear is teaming up with NFT art marketplace SuperRare.

Netgear will join the SuperRare DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) to help develop a licensing and royalty model for displaying NFTs on digital screens. The licensing model, which supports the display of curated SuperRare collections on the Meural platform, reinforces a vision both companies share to create new ways to interact with digital art, culture and collections.

The acquisition of $RARE tokens and participation in the SuperRare DAO signals the start of a new era for Netgear and a redoubled commitment to creating a new model for digital art, the company said. Its involvement in the SuperRare DAO is designed to shape the future of decentralized curation, community organizing and artist empowerment.

Empowering artists

Meural by Netgear was developed on the belief that thoughtful use of technology can transform access and discovery of visual art and make it part of people’s daily lives.

The platform consists of a WiFi-connected digital canvas, Meural art Library (the world’s largest streaming library for art and photography), smartphone app and web portal. It was developed to engage new audiences in digital art while creating additional revenue streams for creators.

While they have been controversial and prices have cratered recently, Netgear said NFTs are now enabling the promise of the digital art world.

“By introducing digital scarcity to art and collectibles, NFTs and blockchain technology have given new financial and creative powers to digital artists,” said Poppy Simpson, senior product and content manager for Netgear’s Meural product line. “Netgear supports this exciting development and is committed to working with creators, collectors and enthusiasts to create a licensing model that reflects their interests.”

Simpson added: “Working with SuperRare Labs to develop a licensing framework like SuperRare
community can support feels like a spiritual alignment between our brands to build a broader,
more diverse art and curation ecosystem.”

Inspirations

Meural has been part of the Netgear portfolio of smart home products since 2018 and helps
advance the company’s vision of a fully connected world. The premium digital canvas box
deliver a realistic art experience that can be controlled via gestures, desktop, mobile app,
or voice (Amazon Alexa).

Meural Canvas allows you to interact with your art daily via its library of over 30,000 licensed artworks and serves as the best media distribution platform for displaying visual art. Most NFTs are not easy to display, but the Meural platform frees NFT collections from the confines of digital wallets and allows owners to enjoy their purchased pieces on the walls of their home or office, Netgear said.

Designed as a marketplace to collect and trade unique single-edition digital artworks, SuperRare ensures that each artwork is authentically created by an artist in the network and tokenized as a crypto-collectible digital item that consumers can own and trade.

Netgear integrated Meural with crypto wallets Coinbase and MetaMask, and partnered with Async Art to add dynamic, programmable NFTs to the Meural library.

Meural will also be featured in SuperRare’s pop-up gallery in the SoHo area of ​​New York, bringing together well-known NFT artists and the larger CryptoArt community. Open through August 28, SuperRare Gallery has a rotating program of five NFT exhibitions, some organized by the company’s in-house curatorial team, others by guest curators. In addition, Meural will showcase approximately 100 works, curated by SuperRare, on the Meural platform as the new licensing model is worked out.

Founded in 2018, SuperRare is a curated marketplace for digital art, built on the Ethereum blockchain. Since its inception, SuperRare has seen more than $300 million worth of NFT artwork bought and sold on the platform to date, with more than $150 million going directly to artists.

In other news, Netgear said Meural canvases have added support for the Solana blockchain self-storage wallet, Phantom. Starting next month, collectors will be able to connect their Phantom wallet to display their NFTs on Meural, a digital canvas designed to display digital works in the same way as classical art.

The NFT price crash and the crypto winter

I asked Netgear what it thinks about the NFT price drop and the crypto winter.

“The overall trend for the blue-chip art project is a decorrelation from the crypto price. It’s not tied to the same volatility,” Simpson said in an email to GamesBeat. “We saw massive flooding of the market in Q4 that has led what we see now – the market has resolved itself. It is not surprising given the rapid growth and introduction of the NFT market. Digital creators have been creating art for a very long time, and that won’t change. What NFTs have done is provide a technology that allows these artists to sell collectibles by introducing the concept of scarcity.”

Netgear believes it’s a clarifying moment for the market and not one that hurts it. But it’s also still a market that needs development in terms of audience and adoption, Simpson said.

Regarding the crypto integration, Simpson said: “We’ve been in stealth mode and have seen extremely healthy usage over the last two quarters. Given the number of partnerships, we’re leveraging, we expect this to continue to grow as we build out support for NFT collectors and content enthusiasts and fans.”