BLOCKCHAIN: INNOVATION AT THE SERVICE OF ART
In the space of a few years, the term blockchain has spread like wildfire and has drawn the attention of many players of the art world. This technology could well solve our trust issues, secure our processes and simplify our daily exchanges. But what is it exactly? What are the fields of application of blockchain in real life? How is this technology relevant to the art market? What questions does it raise? In this article, MADE IN BED contributor, Brian Beccafico, will answer these crucial questions to help you as the art world becomes more digitally-driven and the application of blockchain becomes more common.
Graphic by Anthony A. LoPresti for Lima Charlie News.
Blockchain: a technology for storing and transmitting information
Blockchain is a digital data management protocol. It allows not only to store data - like others before it: the punch card, the magnetic tape, or the hard disk - but also to manage encryption and retransmission. To put it simply, it is a large database, which has the specificity of being public, secure, and distributed between its different users.
Tamper-proof technology
The blockchain contains all of the exchanges made between its users and is particularly robust to external attacks. Blockchain relies not on an intermediary or controlled body, but on the presence of networked "miners", whose mission is to check the validity of transactions, block-by-block. It is said to be tamper-proof, inviolable, and transparent because it rests simultaneously on different computers, the "nodes" of the network; enough to prevent the blockchain from being hacked.
"You have to imagine a very large notebook, which everyone can read freely and for free, on which everyone can write, but which is impossible to erase and indestructible" describes the mathematician, Jean-Paul Delahaye.[1]
What should be remembered is that a "hash" is information that is irreversibly encrypted, but which does not reveal its content: it is impossible to reconstruct the initial data from this information.[2] We are in the presence of a system capable of "memorising" everything and of storing this data in a completely secure language: everything that one would expect on the art market.
The Application of Blockchain #IRL
There is an example I use to explain blockchain to neophytes. I call it “understand blockchain in 2 minutes with a 2 euro coin.” Currently, all the information about a specific 2 euro coin figures on the coin itself: the head and the tail provide the monetary value, the year, and the seal linked to the country where it was produced. The amount of information is limited.
Now, the same coin within a blockchain system would provide us with much more information. Its value would be the same except that it could give us its value in other currencies, in real-time, and subject to inflation. It would figure not only the place and date of manufacturing but also all the stores in which it was exchanged, what it was used for, and all the people that have been in possession of it.
So the information made available about this coin could be that it was given to John as change for a 5 pound note when buying a snickers bar worth 3 pounds at the 7 eleven on Elizabeth Avenue in Glasgow, the sunny afternoon of the 14th of July at 3:52 pm and that before that, it was used the week before to pay 37.5% of the value of a pack of cigarettes in the same store by Sarah who herself acquired it a month earlier and so forth.
The same logic would apply to art pieces. When purchasing a painting, a blockchain system would allow any buyer to track the entire life cycle of the artwork providing a fully transparent provenance history that would act as proof of authenticity.
This information is valuable as traceability and provenance generate value and engage trust, especially in the art market. The blockchain could simply restore confidence by making it possible to retrace the course of work in a transparent and irrefutable way.[3] Imagine all the catalogs of private sales, collector's successions, or auctions, gathered in a single digital catalog.
A child plays with some of the seeds in Ai Weiwei's installation 'Sunflower Seeds' at The Tate Modern in London, England on October 11, 2010. (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images).
Let's take an example. Today, nothing could be simpler than getting work from a listed artist. For example, Artist Ai Weiwei's “Sunflower seeds" are available online. at all prices. You can buy an Ai Weiwei on eBay in just a few clicks: search for “Sunflowers Seeds” and you will find dozens of results on these general online sales sites; lots of hand-painted porcelain sunflower seeds priced at $6.99 to $499. Do they all come from the installation "Kui Hua Zi" produced by the artist at the Tate Gallery in 2010? Of course not, but I challenge you to find someone who can tell you which seed is "real" and which seed is "fake".[4]
Buying art online: Accessibility and reliability do not always go hand in hand
If the creation, sale, or exhibition of each work was recorded in the blockchain by tomorrow, doubt would no longer be possible. Mistrust would no longer stifle emotion and would leave room for the essential: the relationship to the work.
The answers provided by the blockchain to questions of trust and transparency are very concrete today. The greatest challenge of this transformation will be to federate the authorities, the actors of the economy, and the end-users around it, to develop it, and to forget its apparent technicality. Because deploying an effective system takes time. And because all good technology must know how to be forgotten in favor of use.
This is an exciting future for the art market in which artists may play a pioneering role!
[1] http://www.senat.fr/rap/r17-584/r17-58434.html
[2] https://www.amazon.fr/Blockchains-th%C3%A9orie-pratique-lid%C3%A9e-limpl%C3%A9mentation/dp/2409005365
[3] https://www2.deloitte.com/lu/en/pages/art-finance/articles/art-finance-report.html
[4] https://hyperallergic.com/17593/sunflower-seeds-sothebys/
Brian Beccafico
Contributor, MADE IN BED