For the average person, talk of ‘the blockchain’ conjures up little more than thoughts of speculative cryptocurrencies and NFTs. And that’s not surprising. After all, most of the media attention surrounding blockchain technology has centered there. But there’s another side to the blockchain: an intensely practical side that has the potential to upend traditional ways of doing things in a variety of industries, including the art world.
You see, NFTs aren’t the only thing that blockchain technology can offer the art industry. Its underlying technology is practically custom-tailored to meet one of the industry’s greatest needs: provenance.
The Challenge of Art Provenance
For centuries, artists, collectors, and dealers have struggled to find the best ways to identify and verify artwork provenance. Meanwhile, forgers have taken advantage of the situation by flooding the market with copies and fakes. It’s led to an art industry filled with uncertainty and fear.
Many novice collectors worry about spending big money for a piece of artwork that eventually proves to be worthless. Art galleries silently share those fears, terrified of what might happen to their reputation if word gets out that they’ve fallen for a fake. And artists lose out as their original works are copied and sold, leaving them struggling even more to make ends meet.
And that is where blockchain comes in.
Blockchain: The Future of Art Provenance
If you’re unfamiliar with blockchain, it’s not that difficult to wrap your mind around. At its most basic, it’s like a giant, digital ledger that can hold a near infinite number of transactions. But unlike traditional ledgers, it’s not stored in a single physical location or hard drive. Instead, it’s simultaneously managed and updated on a host of different computers, all connected to one another via the internet. And since any new transactions must be added to all of the computers at the same time, it’s practically impossible to hack or forge.
While blockchain was originally developed to support cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, innovative entrepreneurs quickly came up with a host of other uses. Tracking artwork provenance is one such use.
When The Art World & Blockchain Meet
Just think of how blockchain could revolutionize the way the art world proves provenance…
An artist finished a piece and logs it onto a blockchain designed specifically for artwork. When the artwork is sold, its ownership is transferred on the blockchain. Every subsequent sale of the piece would be tracked on the blockchain, making its provenance simple to see for anyone. It would be completely immutable and transparent, so there’d never have to be another question concerning who a piece of artwork actually belongs to.
Questions Concerning Blockchain
So, what’s keeping this from being a reality? In order for this form of provenance to be as effective as possible, it would require participation by everyone involved in every transaction. There could be no under-the-table deals or simply passing the artwork along to someone else without also transferring ownership on blockchain. Fortunately, there would be a strong incentive to participate, since the blockchain would prove ownership. And any buyer should want the security that offers.
The only real drawback to using blockchain for art provenance is the lack of privacy it would offer owners. Once ownership was logged into the blockchain ledger, any information — including names and more — would be available for anyone on the blockchain to see. As a result, there may be some who are hesitant to jump in feet first because of privacy concerns. Though there’s every reason to believe that as the technology and its applications become more familiar, concerns over privacy will lessen.
The Future of Provenance Is Now
After all, there was a time in the not-too-distant past when people couldn’t fathom using a credit card to buy things online. Today, Amazon.com is one of the largest retailers in the world. In the same way, blockchain technology is poised to change the way the art world understands provenance forever.
It’s no longer a question of if this technology will be adopted by artists and collectors. It’s merely a question of when.
And now is as good a time as any.
