DADA Is the only social network on Earth where people speak to each other through drawings. Thousands of artists create beautiful spontaneous visual conversations right in our platform. The DAon art collection becomes permanently embedded in the blockchain and can no longer be modified. This allows a user to verify that there are indeed only a certain number of limited edition DADA Artworks, that the artwork you buy belongs to you, and that it was created by a specific artist.
Collaborative platform for artists, DADA.nyc, announces today the launch of the first digital art marketplace using blockchain technology.This Halloween will see the launch of the marketplace’s first digital collection titled “Creeps & Weirdos”, Halloween-themed, limited-edition drawings made by artists from around the world.
The collection will only be available with Ethereum cryptocurrency while purchased and each work will be assigned to one of five levels of scarcity, ranging from common to extremely rare drawings.The launch will be held on October 31 with a party in New York City.
Artwork by Carlos Marquez in DADA
The ability to purchase an original piece of digital artwork with Ethereum cryptocurrency might seem like a trick at first, but the technological evolution is groundbreaking for the digital art world. Public blockchain networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum utilize cryptographic keys and signatures to approve transactions and sign unique data. Because Ethereum is a decentralized and immutable blockchain network, transactions or smart contracts processed by the Ethereum protocol and its miners cannot be altered without breaching into the entire network.
An original copy of the Mona Lisa, is worth a couple of billion dollars, but the fake copies you might be able to pick up in a museum gift shop are not worth anywhere near as much. The issue for the digital art world has been that every copy of the Mona Lisa is valued the same regardless of originality.
Blockchain and its complex technology have made it possible for artists and buyers to claim ownership, authenticity and verify that the digital artwork they possess is original. As the network operates with a significant amount of computing power which a centralized entity cannot possibly generate, Ethereum transactions and smart contracts are unalterable by nature.
In the traditional art industry, it is possible to purchase fake or counterfeit versions of widely recognized paintings like Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. The original Mona Lisa painting, which was acquired in 1960s at $100 million, is currently worth more than $790 million, given the inflation rate of the US dollar over the past few decades. But, fake versions of the original Mona Lisa paintings can be acquired at much lower costs.
The biggest Art Movement – DADA
Essentially, the DADA digital art marketplace is assigning a unique private key or signature to a single artwork to ensure that digital content creators can sell original pieces of digital artwork to buyers within a peer-to-peer protocol. Blockchain hopes to change all that and apply the principles that have guided the valuation of physical art to the digital art world.
Before blockchain, it was impossible for a digital art buyer to be certain of purchasing an authentic piece of art and for the artists to be properly compensated for their original artwork.Blockchain is able to achieve that simply by issuing IP certificates and proof of ownership across a decentralized, secure and consistent network.
Although users can still take screenshots of digital art sold through blockchain, DADA Founder Beatriz Ramos explained that the value remains with the unique token and that taking screenshots will be like making a photocopy of a dollar bill.
Artwork by Boris Toledo
The technology of blockchain goes hand-in-hand with cryptocurrencies. In fact, when blockchain was first created, it was done with the purpose of making cryptocurrency transactions more secure. The reason being that cryptocurrencies had the same problem with counter fitting and devaluation as digital art, which forced them to develop a technology that would keep a ledger and secure authenticity of transactions and original value. Since then blockchain has revolutionized a wide range of digital industries with artwork only being one of them.
Artwork in Weirdos and Creeps Collection.
In June, Matt Hall and John Watkinson, the co-founders of Larva Labs, executed a similar idea in which 10,000 artworks were distributed using the Ethereum blockchain to create a decentralized art marketplace.“The whole thing is pretty weird, and that’s kind of why we did this.
There’s like a weird intersection here between these virtual, digital things and an artificial rarity, but a rarity that is real and valuable in some sense,” said Hall. The developers of DADA aim to create a commercial platform wherein both digital content creators and buyers can benefit from the transparent and incentivized marketplace.
When DADA launches the Creeps & Weirdos collection this Halloween, it should serve as a new landmark for digital artwork as a whole. Some of the featured artists are Boriz Z. Simunich, Carlos Marquez and Beatriz Ramos, who have been active users of the DADA platform and have highly impressed with some of their previous art pieces.
What do you think?