KnownOrigin.io - A Digital Arts Marketplace
Tokenisation of digital Artworks using Non-fungible tokens (ERC-721)
Enabling new forms of value creation, creation of new markets for artist and creatives as well as providing new trustless collaboration tools with true ownership
About the Project
In April 2018 we launched a small popup art gallery with the goal to showcase the application of blockchain technology in the form of digital artwork tokenised on Ethereum. Combining Art and Technology, both harnessing our passion for beauty and technology.
The event was a success, demonstrating the power of smart contracts, tokenised artwork and public blockchains such as Ethereum. It also demonstrated viability in the use of cryptocurrency as a method of value transfer between collectors and artists.
KnownOrigin is now a successful marketplace selling digital artwork as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), enabling hundreds of artists to monetize their work in a borderless, unstoppable world market, without intermediaries and free of cost.
Implementation
KnownOrigin is built using a suite of tools which leverage the very best in decentralised and web3 technologies, harnessing the power of the most popular and advanced public smart contract platform, Ethereum.
These technologies include amongst other things:
Smart Contracts in the Solidity language
- Enforcing ownership, providing a mechanism for value transfer
- Ensuring a chain of custody is maintained and provenance is public and visible
- Enabling new forms of collaboration between artists
IPFS (Interplanetary file system)
- IPFS is used to host all data associated with the digital assets including images, names, descriptions
- A peer-2-peer decentralised open network for sharing files
Blockchain UX patterns
- Blockchain UX is notoriously tricky, applying best practice UX and leveraging advanced tools such as Wallet Connect, BlockNative and TheGraph
- Mobile first responsive design, artwork is accessible and within reach of all
Data Caching and Cloud Native Infrastructure
- Harnessing cloud infrastructure and data caching techniques improving user experience and facilitating advanced data analytics
- Cloud native DBs, serverless APIs and message processing allows the application to scale according to demand
Outcome
Since launch, KnownOrigin has sold more than 5400+ pieces of art from over 170 digital artists around the world.
Raising more than 280 ETH in sales revenue for artists - over $40,000.
With month on month growth, the traditional art world is taking note of the digital arts scene. Tokenisation of artwork placed on the Ethereum Blockchain seems to be a perfect solution to an age old problem.
Since KnownOrigin, BlockRocket has now successfully built and delivered several NFT based solutions. Having this real-world experience, implementation and knowledge means others can leverage our experience and tools.
