Certified listings on blockchain could help authenticate works of art, according to Swiss start-up
- Certified listings could help bust fakes and determine market value, says founder of Arteïa
- Company hoping to raise US$15 million through ICO for its provenance tracker
Certified listings on blockchain could help authenticate works of art, according to Olivier Marian, founder and chief strategy officer at three-year-old Swiss start-up Arteïa.
Marian said a digital “catalogue raisonné”, or a detailed curriculum listing all known works of art by an artist, could help bust fakes and forgeries, and determine provenance and market value.
“A big problem of the art market is whether the art works have certified provenance directly from the artists or from other experts. Even for the works of da Vinci, we still have experts debating about the various versions and their authenticity. The lack of such certainty is obviously a problem for artworks that have reached record prices,” said Marian.
He was in town for Art Basel Hong Kong, the city’s biggest art event, to meet potential clients, business partners and investors interested in an initial coin offering (ICO) by Arteïa slated for June at the earliest. The company aims to raise up to US$15 million, and a soft cap for the ICO will be set US$3.5 million, below which Arteïa will call off the crowdfunding project.
In tandem with the ICO launch, Arteïa plans to debut a provenance tracker on the ethereum blockchain, creating an immutable shared registry documenting an artwork’s life cycle.
