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This is the current landscape of blockchains, which are isolated systems unable to communicate with each other without a third party. They need ‘bridges’ to allow them to interact; cross-chain protocols that provide an agreed-upon method of transferring information or value across different blockchains. However, current cross-chain protocols are severely limited by cost and security risks, as well as by the fact that they can only link two blockchains together at a time. Until recently, there was no way to truly have an NFT on any other chain except the one it was minted on. Bridging your NFT using a cross-chain protocol like Wormhole, for example, doesn’t transfer the real NFT to your destination chain. Instead, it locks the original NFT in a Wormhole contract, and gives you a replica NFT on the destination chain. But you can't really sell a replica; it flies in the face of everything NFTs stand for.

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There’s some good news, however. We’re currently entering a new phase of ‘omnichain’ technology, which allows users to ‘traverse’ their crypto assets between multiple blockchains, and for NFTs to be verified as assets on each of the destination chains. To go back to the example above: as an artist minting your NFTs on Avalanche, you can traverse them to Polygon or Ethereum using an omnichain like LayerZero. You can then sell them on OpenSea, which runs on Ethereum, and display them on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook for all your followers to see. There are other benefits of omnichain assets too, like NFTs that have different attributes or utilities depending on which chain they’re on. There’s also the potential for omnichain assets to be integrated into future games or applications, regardless of which blockchain they run on. 

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This is a huge revolution in the space, and some creators are already taking advantage of the many possibilities it offers. The NFT project Tiny Dinos is one of the first truly omnichain NFTs, created in April 2022. The pixelated, pastel coloured characters were minted simultaneously across seven different blockchains (Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, Binance Smart Chain, Fantom, Arbitrum, and Optimism) and are transferable across any of these networks. Since its release a month ago, Tiny Dinos has traded a volume of 3,700 ETH, or a little over $9 million USD at the time of writing. 

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Culture Vault is actively looking into omnichain smart contracts and hopes to mint omnichain NFTs for creators in the not so distant futur. By utilising omnichain technology, both NFT and blockchain projects stand to benefit from wider coverage and non-proprietary usage. The ability to traverse assets over multiple chains allows creators to collaborate on projects across protocols, and to extend their reach beyond a single network. Artists can share their vision and expand their user base in new ecosystems, while collectors and crypto users are empowered with the choice to decide which blockchain best suits their needs for any given application. 

Back in January 2022, Twitter launched a feature that allows subscribers of their paid Twitter Blue service to link their ether wallet to their Twitter account. As a result, any NFTs they own that are stored in their wallet can be verified by Twitter and then displayed as a PFP (profile picture). Not only is this an exciting step forward for one of the biggest social media platforms (and they’ve since been followed by Meta), but it’s a big step forward for the NFT space as well. It means mainstream adoption and better understanding of what NFTs are, how they can be used, and why they matter. Although Twitter users have been displaying NFTs as their profile pictures for some time now, this feature actually captures the authenticity and ownership that NFTs are fundamentally all about. Users can’t just display any PFP they like - they have to actually own it. This adds value to the image, which is often a unique artwork by a digital artist, and in turn that artist gains more exposure. More visibility and adoption of NFTs encourages other creators and collectors to enter the space too, so it’s a yes from us! 

Elon’s main beef with Twitter as it currently stands is the amount of bots and spam accounts on the platform. Twitter claims that only 5% of its active accounts are bots; Elon vehemently disputes this. He’s also made a lot of noise about freedom of speech and de-censoring the platform, posting back in April 2022 that “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.” But will Elon’s vows to democratize Twitter extend to making integrated NFT features available to all users, including those who aren’t paid subscribers? We sure hope so.

Aside from NFTs, Twitter’s future owner has also hinted that cryptocurrency payments could be more fully integrated on the platform, which already has functionality for BTC and ETH ‘tips’. At a June 16th Twitter meeting Musk said, “It would make sense to integrate (crypto) payments into Twitter so it's easy to send money back and forth." This would easily allow artists to gather financial support from their fans and collectors with the freedom and decentralized nature of cryptocurrency payments. Could it also mean the possibility of NFT sales directly via Twitter?

While that remains to be seen, there’s more work going on behind the scenes to integrate NFTs with Twitter that we can’t wait to see. The developers are working on a new ‘Collectible’ tab, where users would be able to display the NFTs they own for their followers to see. This is something that we’re super excited about, because a feature like this would give creators and collectors alike the ability to curate and display their NFTs all in one place, beyond a single PFP. Although these are only small steps towards full integration, Twitter’s adoption of cryptocurrency and NFTs signal to us that the company is committed to helping digital artists and creators share their unique artwork with the world as NFTs. And one can only hope that with Elon at the wheel, things will continue to evolve and improve. 

“Looking ahead a few years, NFTs could be the central digital touchpoint between brands and their consumers — and one that is controlled by the brand itself.”

The reason for the vast popularity and value of NFTs is that they offer previously unattainable scarcity and unique ownership of digital assets. And not only that, HBR goes on to say, NFTs give buyers and sellers a mechanism that they both agree represents ownership. This makes it possible to build markets around new types of transactions, to buy and sell products that could never be sold before, and for transactions to happen in innovative ways that are more efficient and valuable. For instance, NFTs could provide membership to an exclusive club, entry to events, access to limited edition merchandise and, most importantly, inclusion in a thriving community that is built around a brand’s unique values and vision.

The power that NFTs give brands is twofold: their ability to build strong, engaged communities around a range of products and ideas, and to form closer connections with consumers. There’s an immediacy and intimacy in the way NFTs connect brands with buyers that hasn’t previously been possible. A number of big players in the fashion, technology, sports and music industries have already made moves to immerse themselves in the NFT sphere for precisely these reasons. Fashion house Coach, for instance, launched a collection of artworks as NFTs in late 2021 featuring animals from its promotional holiday game. The purchase of one of the NFTs also entitled collectors to a custom (and highly exclusive) Coach bag. The Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 team has partnered with digital artist Mad Dog Jones on a collection of eleven NFTs, which feature an artistic interpretation of the signature car driven by Lewis Hamilton. This shows the sheer scope of possibilities that NFTs make possible for brands, without confining them to one single product, industry, consumer group, or event.

Culture Vault is excited to be exploring these possibilities with brands like Glenfiddich and Australian fashion designer Iordanes Spyridon Gogos and sneaker designer Chase Shiel. For the Afterpay Australian Fashion Week 2022, the renowned whiskey distillery Glenfiddich presented a fresh collaboration between the two designers. Gogos and Shiel created an exclusive shoe, the ISG x CS GF0 that was worn by Gogos on the runway and then airdropped as an NFT to the attendees of the fashion show. The NFT is a marker of participation in the brand’s history, a commemoration of an exclusive event, and a lasting souvenir of this one-off creative collaboration.

At Culture Vault, we know that as more and more brands enter the space in new and innovative ways, the value and engagement in NFTs will only keep expanding. If you are wanting to collaborate with Culture Vault on a project, whether it be a brand activation, or to add depth to your digital strategy, please reach out to the team here.

At Culture Vault, we do things a little differently from other NFT marketplaces. Our platform is positioned at the intersection of the traditional art world and the exciting new frontier of blockchain technology - and our processes reflect this. We carefully select the artists and brands we work with based on their reputability and significance, so you always know who’s behind the art you’re buying. We take pride in the systems we’ve built, and the technology leaders we’re partnering with. From the minting process on Polygon, which uses less energy and results in lower fees (equivalent of two emails per mint), to an on-chain storage system for all digital assets via ArWeave and ArDrive, the integrity and longevity of our NFTs is not compromised. The way we connect with artists and bring them on board through our broad and diverse network of cultural connections, means you can rest assured that all of Culture Vault’s NFT’s are verifiable and authentic works of art, from traditional and emerging artists across a broad and diverse cultural scope.

It seems pretty clear to us that the real value of NFTs is their ability to unequivocally denote authenticity and ownership of digital assets. The provenance of art is a slippery subject in the traditional market, where fakes and frauds are abound. But with NFTs - in the right hands - you can trace a work of art all the way back to its inception, and see exactly who created it. We love that this also means that it’s easy to link profits back to the original creator, both via the initial purchase, or through a royalties structure (yes -we even have a payment splitter function). By purchasing a carefully curated, premium NFT from Culture Vault, you’re directly supporting artists and contributing to a robust ecosystem of creative individuals and brands.

As a team of passionate art and technology professionals, we prioritise the security and experience of our artists as well as our collectors. We place a high value on compliance, so there is a team dedicated to making sure our artists’ funds are secure, and that purchases are legitimate and above board. The meaningful and valuable relationships we forge with all of our artists and collaborators are what sets Culture Vault apart. We’re more than a minting machine, we’re a diverse community of creatives who are enthusiastic about the future of art and its integration with the web 3 ecoystem.

Our approach is in line with Sotheby’s curator Robert Alice’s view that “for the NFT medium — which offers such ease of access — curation is necessary in order for the space to evolve.” Culture Vault’s IRL relationships with clients and our experience in the traditional art world are directly applied to our work in Web 3.0, bringing a level of expertise and professionalism to the space.

To explain why a focused curatorial lens is crucial for NFT art, we reached out to curator, artist and creative director Bianca Beers:

CV: What drew you to NFTs?

BB: ”As a predominantly digital artist, it felt like a natural step for me. Often I felt like brick and mortar galleries were never for me, they always feel so showy and stuck up… but the initial allure of NFTs for me was being able to “show” to an international audience, without having to create fluff around a piece I’m showing. With NFTs I think it’s more ‘it is what it is’, I like that.”

CV: What do you see the curator’s role being in the NFT space, given that so many artists are working and selling their work independently?

BB: “I think being part of something bigger is always nice; community is what we strive for as humans. A curator not only gets a bunch of art together, but a bunch of individuals together too, which gives them a chance to learn, be inspired, connect, network, collaborate. Something the NFT space is great for!”

CV: What are you drawn to when collecting and curating NFTs?

BB: “I personally like art that is interesting or uplifts, something with a bit of the creator in it. For me, it doesn’t matter so much WHO made it, are they successful, what does it represent… it’s more about the warm feeling inside when I see the art.”

As well as a discerning curatorial lens like Bianca’s, Culture Vault places a strong emphasis on our creative agency. We’re passionate about building a diverse community of artists and cultural brands, helping them develop their creative and business strategies. It’s another way we stay a cut above the rest, using our technological expertise to make the most of all the unique opportunities that Web3 offers artists, collectors and brands alike.

Stay tuned for more highly curated and boundary-pushing collections coming soon to Culture Vault!

Collaboration is beneficial for everyone involved - artistically, it creates a synergy of ideas and skills that produces something completely new and unique. Strategically, collaboration allows participants to reach an audience they might not have been able to before, and to leverage the exposure of an entity or individual with similar goals to their own. We’re especially excited about the possibilities for this in the digital art and NFT spaces, with so many talented and innovative artists bursting onto the scene.

We also know that there are plenty of incentives for businesses to participate in the space too, so we’re focused on fostering meaningful, productive collaborations between artists and brands. And we’re uniquely placed to do so, because the relationships we have with all of our artists and collaborators are what set Culture Vault apart from lots of other NFT Art platforms. We combine our traditional art world knowledge, experience, and networks with cutting-edge technological expertise. This gives us the oversight to initiate and develop relationships that might not otherwise be possible.

As well as our focus on cultivating creativity, we’re also mindful of the ‘strategic’ part of creative strategy. Our collections are carefully put together, and we only work with creators who are truly invested in the NFT art space. This adds authenticity and validity to all of the NFTs on our platform, ensuring their lasting value and integrity. It also means that every partnership we’re involved in is genuine and purposeful. An example we’re really proud of is the union of two visionary Australian icons: the fashion house Romance Was Born, and photographer Ribal Hosn. Their collection of works on Culture Vault, ‘A Certain Romance’, is the product of a deeply thoughtful and completely original collaboration. Designers and founders of ‘Romance Was Born’, Anna Plunkett and Luke Sales, bring their instantly recognizable and internationally loved style of camp and glamor to the three ‘Looks’ for the series. In turn, the looks have been interpreted through film by renowned fashion photographer and filmmaker Ribal Hosn. The result is a hybrid of digital art, film, and wearable fashion that goes beyond traditional categorisations.

It’s a perfect illustration of why we love the power of collaboration so much, and why we’re continuing to forge new, unexpected and valuable relationships between artists and brands.

Tokenframe is stepping in to answer these questions with elegant, sophisticated solutions for ‘phygital’ displays. You may or may not be familiar with the term ‘phygital’, but it’s essentially exactly what it sounds like - the bridging of the ‘physical’ and ‘digital’ worlds. As we transition into a more fully digitized and augmented reality, we nonetheless need physical and practical solutions for displaying digital art and NFTs in the here and now, whilst retaining their authenticity. Tokenframe’s mission is to give a fresh breath of life and excitement to the NFT community, progressing it beyond PFPs and social media hype. Their authentic wooden frames that come in birch, mahogany, white, or black allow NFTs to be displayed on the wall like a piece of traditional fine art. Whether it’s in the collector’s home, a gallery, or corporate headquarters, a frame that brings digital objects into the physical realm is essential for greater enjoyment and awareness of NFTs as works of art.

But phygital display isn’t the only problem that Tokenframe has managed to solve. NFT skeptics have highlighted the fact that anyone can right-click and save an image on the internet, supposedly giving them the same access to the image that the owner of the NFT has. Not only does this way of thinking completely miss the point of an NFT’s ability to confer verified ownership, provenance, and authenticity, there are obvious barriers to sharing and displaying public images that you don’t actually own. It’s sort of like hanging a poster of the Mona Lisa on your wall - everyone knows it's not the real thing.

With Tokenframe, only artwork that is verifiably owned by the user can be displayed. NFT owners link their wallets (there are over fifty compatible options) in order to cast their NFTs to the frame, making fraudulent display impossible. From its non-custodial app, Tokenframe lets users view and curate their NFTs, create a custom slideshow, and change the NFT’s display to their heart’s content. It also offers complete customisability in terms of appearance, including background colour, fill, fit, orientation, and border width. The frame itself can also be rotated, depending on the visual properties of the NFT (vertical or horizontal), and includes speakers for a fully immersive experience. Madonna and Beeple’s NFT on loop, anyone?

It seems inevitable that we are moving ever closer to the ubiquity of digital and AR display solutions, like the metaverse galleries that are popping up more and more frequently in the web ecosysten. However, there is still a distinct need for a beautiful, high-quality method of displaying NFTs in our earthly domain. With so much incredible art being created in the digital sphere, it’s only fitting that Tokenframe is providing a means of phygital display to match, and all NFTs purchased on Culture Vault are compatible with the Tokenframe System.

Start showing off your NFTs with Tokenframe here

NFTs are proving to be the next frontier of the art world; a more expansive, diverse, and accessible space than the entrenched hierarchies of traditional art. The decentralized nature of the technology poses fewer barriers for artists who are underrepresented in the traditional market, allowing them to reach audiences more directly and claim creative and financial control over their work. That’s why at Culture Vault, we’re committed to representing a diverse array of artists and viewpoints, as this openness and accessibility is a key tenet of web3. We don’t want to replicate the inherent biases in existing art systems, so we’re dedicated to showcasing both emerging and established artists from all walks of life.

Creative industries are sometimes perceived as being more progressive and inclusive than others, and inequality in the arts is often downplayed or overlooked. In 2021, the Australia Council for the Arts published a report on diversity in the cultural sector with some pretty damning results. The report found that many of those who are most engaged with art and culture in Australia are also underrepresented, under-resourced, or under-compensated for their work. For instance, arts and cultural engagement are integral to the daily lives of First Nations Australians, yet they’re often unable to access resources or shape decision-making in the arts. What’s more, Australians in remote areas are twice as likely to have trouble getting to arts events than those living in metropolitan or regional areas, so they’re more often excluded from participation and engagement. At Culture Vault, we recognise that web3 and NFTs have the ability to shift these power imbalances by helping individuals break the cycle of homogenization, and shifting the paradigm away from centralized cultural gatekeepers.

We’re excited to work with artists from a wide range of backgrounds and help them facilitate their transition to web3. This includes Dylan Mooney, a proud Yuwi, Torres Strait and South Sea Islander man from Mackay in North Queensland, whose collection ‘Plant Characters’ explores the unique properties of native Indigenous plants. We’re also proud of our ongoing collaboration with The Huxleys, a dynamic duo whose work is saturated with glamorous visuals of androgynous freedom and camp commentary. Part of our group of artists is Chris Yee, who presents a unique perspective of the Asian-Australian creative community through his sold-out collection ‘Crossing Line’ and Ailie Banks, an artistic voice of advocacy for the experience of female-identifying and non-binary people. Our ethos of representation is echoed by Harold Hughes, founder and CEO of Bandwagon and thought leader in the NFT space:

“Representation in NFTs comes from education and appreciation. When more artists are aware of the opportunities available in NFTs and more people have the chance to appreciate their work, there will be even more diversity in this space.”

At Culture Vault, we believe it’s imperative to avoid recreating the biases of the existing arts and cultural sectors, to take advantage of the openness and accessibility that NFT and blockchain technology offer, and champion artists whose voices have previously gone unheard.

Serwah Attafuah joins Culture Vault as part of the collaborative series ‘Secret Worlds’, curated by the wonderful Bianca Beers. Serwah is a highly acclaimed multi-disciplinary artist and musician based on Dharug land/West Sydney, who has been making 3D artwork since 2013 and recently become an acclaimed creator in the NFT space. She creates fantastical, dystopian future worlds populated by afro-futuristic imagined self-portraits. Serwah draws on her history and experience as an oil painter in her digital work, with clear references to Renaissance and classical art in the composition, figures, and grandiosity of her future scapes. She has worked with clients including Mercedes Benz, Nike, GQ, Adobe, Paris Hilton, and Charli XCX, and was included in the Sotheby’s exhibition ‘Natively Digital: A Curated NFT Sale’ in 2021.

We are extremely honoured to showcase Serwah’s work as part of ‘Secret Worlds’ because she stands out as an important and highly visible artist opening up discussions and giving presence to empowering images of diverse identities in the NFT space. Sydney artist and creator Bianca Beers put together ‘Secret Worlds’ for Culture Vault as an exposition of the inner feelings, thoughts, and dreams of the included artists.

Serwah brings her idiosyncratic style of digital rendering to the collection, creating a dream-like wasteland of the future inhabited by a larger-than-life representation of self. True to the intention of Bianca’s curatorial statement, Serwah states that “art is an escape from the world for me.” In escaping the every day, she creates her own idealised, hyper-stylised metaverse in which everyone can show up as their full selves, whatever that might look like. She quite literally sculpts these worlds with her own two hands, viewing the process of 3D creation as godlike - carving out a terrain, orchestrating light, choosing which elements exist and where, creating a world completely from scratch. It’s tantalising and electrifying to step inside Serwah’s ‘secret world’, which she invites us to do with this incredible 1/1 NFT.

‘Freestyle003’ is Serwah’s contribution to the ‘Secret Worlds’ collection, executed in her instantly recognisable, dreamy, and intensely coloured style. The female character’s pose is reminiscent of Titian's Venus or Manet’s Olympia - reclining, exuding confidence and leisure, exalting in the feminine. This is a recurring theme of Serwah’s work, where she draws on her training and experience in oil painting by using subtle references to art history. She contrasts these historical tidbits with an uber futuristic, super stylised design that cements her artistic practice in the here and now, on the cutting edge of digital art. The finish is slick and glossy, the colours soft, warm and inviting. The lights of the city behind the female figure flash and flicker, but they’re mellowed by the gently swaying flowers in the foreground. The artist also places special focus on the clothing and accessories that her figures model in the metaverse, and it’s this attention to detail that makes Serwah’s work an instant hit with art audiences and cultural leaders worldwide. The richness and quality of the imagery is part of her widespread appeal and sensuous intrigue. This is what Culture Vault believes makes her works so covetable within the market.

Make sure to check out the work on Culture Vault

Stephen Ormandy is a Sydney-based contemporary artist who works across painting, sculpture, and ceramics. His work is inspired by both the natural world and manmade design; throughout his practice, he maintains a strong commitment to the aesthetics of color and form. Often, the line, shape, and surface of Ormandy’s paintings are echoed in his sculptural work, and vice versa. The organically abstract, bright blocks of colour and curved geometry have an immediately recognizable quality about them. There is a mutual dialogue between the two mediums of Ormandy’s work, which bridges the gap between 2D and 3D. His work is held in multiple public collections across Australia and has been exhibited internationally at renowned institutions and galleries in Sydney, London, New York, and Paris. He is also the Creative Director of Dinosaur Designs, one of Australia’s leading design brands that specializes in fine-crafted jewelry and homewares.

For his genesis collection on Culture Vault, Stephen Ormandy has teamed up with award-winning special effects and post-production studio, Heckler. The resulting collection of NFTs consists of an alphabet of shapes in motion. In his traditional practice, Ormandy looks for sculptural opportunities within a shape, which he bends and turns through space until it takes its final form. This process is visually captured in the animations by Heckler, both in the 14 limited-edition alphabet 3D sculptures, and the two 1/1 3D sculptural animations ‘Big Bang’ and ‘Dark Matter.’ However, the collection extends beyond the works available in digital form. Collectors who own one of each of the limited edition ‘Alphabet’ NFTs will receive a physical sculpture of an ‘Alphabet’ piece of their choice, crafted by Stephen Ormandy. Just as Ormandy’s painting and sculptural practices close the gap between 2D and 3D, his genesis NFT collection exists in both the digital and physical worlds. This ‘phygital’ aspect of the collection positions it at the crossroads of tradition and innovation.

View the collection in a virtual 3D and VR gallery

The 1/1 animated NFT ‘Big Bang’ grew out of Ormandy’s hand-made sculpture ‘Citadel’, which was exhibited at Olsen Gallery, Sydney in 2014. The digital animation and sound effects, produced by Heckler studio, bring out the playful exploration of form in Ormandy’s sculptural practice as he searches for new iterations of shapes. The artist views the cube as a building block of creation, allowing him to take advantage of its plasticity as he molds and remolds it. But in this digital animation, the cube and its corners have burst wide open; Ormandy says they are “no longer bound by gravity.” The title ‘Big Bang’ suggests the original creation of the universe, and of order being created out of chaos. It echoes our constant search for meaning within symbols and shapes, especially in the alphabet of language. Ormandy suggests that in the endless expansion, contraction, and rotation of the shape, “an accidental explanation for the unknown lies in-between what we know.”

View and purchase the complete works here at Culture Vault

Gm. If you’re even slightly familiar with the world of cryptocurrency, you’ve probably heard of Ethereum. As a layer 1 blockchain, it’s the largest smart contract network in the world, and the second-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, after Bitcoin. What you might not know is that with the meteoric growth of traffic on the Ethereum blockchain in the last few years, the network has become slow and expensive to use with wildly varying transaction costs at different times of the day. At the time of writing, one transaction on Ethereum costs about $2.00; a few weeks ago, this was around $23 in fees for every transaction made on Ethereum. 

The gas is too damn high for mainstream adoption.

Aside from the often high costs, Ethereum also suffers occasionally from slow processing times during periods of high congestion on the blockchain; the average speed is fifteen transactions per second. And by now, it’s well known and widely discussed that proof of work blockchains like Ethereum and Bitcoin use copious amounts of energy to run, and that this has a serious impact on the environment. According to Digiconomist, Ethereum uses 113 terawatt-hours per year—as much power as the Netherlands. This makes many people hesitant to use Ethereum, as the discourse around greening the blockchain grows ever louder. We are big and early supporters of the Ethereum ecosystem, but we don’t believe that the current NFT ecosystem will be able to scale under the current user experience of eth, eth2.0 can’t come sooner.

This is why Culture Vault uses Polygon, a layer 2 network or ‘side chain’ to Ethereum that allows for greater scaling than its larger counterpart, and uses less energy to do so. Polygon was originally founded under the name Matic Network in 2017 by crypto-billionaires Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal, and Anurag Arjun. The trio hail from India, but the team now comprises a global community of engineers, developers, and some high-flying investors. The network was originally designed to solve Ethereum’s scalability problems and address other concerns about power consumption and cost. It achieves this by handling transactions on a separate, Ethereum-compatible blockchain. Polygon operates on its own Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism and processes transactions in batches, making it faster and cheaper than Ethereum’s current iteration. Polygon has the capacity to handle up to 65,000 transactions per second, compared to Ethereum’s average limit of around fifteen. As well as being incomparably faster and cheaper to use, Polygon calls itself ‘an internet of blockchains’, meaning it can connect any Ethereum-interoperable blockchain with another. This allows developers to access the benefits of other blockchain platforms with minimal friction and fractional cost.

For users of Culture Vault, this means that NFTs are more affordable to purchase and that buying NFTs on our platform is faster, greener, and significantly lower in gas fees than marketplaces that run on Ethereum (around 0.001 cent at the time of writing). Culture Vault made the conscious decision to build a more accessible, reliable and less congested platform using Polygon, and to pass these benefits on to our community of artists and creatives, while at the same time reducing our impact on the environment. 

And we’re not the only ones! Nearly 20,000 decentralised apps use the Polygon network as of May 2022, including the likes of Decentraland, OpenSea, and Ticketmaster. Possibly the best-known individual associated with Polygon is the billionaire Mark Cuban, who is an investor of Shark Tank fame and a mentor to Polygon’s community. Their vibrant ecosystem is also one of the reasons that large corporate enterprises like EY, Adobe, Stripe, Telefonica, and Dolce & Gabbana are choosing Polygon as their entry point to Web3. Not to mention that Meta recently announced it will be partnering with Polygon to integrate NFTs on Facebook and Instagram, so users can authentically show off their BAYC’s and Cryptopunks for all their followers to admire, without paying anything in fees.

Rounding out the list of reasons why Culture Vault chooses to mint on Polygon, the network recently pledged $20 million to go carbon neutral this year, and they’re shaping up to be a leader in greening the crypto industry. Going carbon neutral means that every NFT minted, every token bridged and all decentralised finance (DeFi) trades made on Polygon will be accounted for, and their environmental impact will be offset. Not only is Polygon accounting for its own carbon footprint and vowing to offset it; part of its “Green Manifesto: A Smart Contract with Planet Earth” includes a plan to provide resources for others in the space who also want to offset their emissions. We know how important it is for our community of artists, collectors, and brand partners to know that their actions are making a positive difference to the climate crisis, and by using Polygon, Culture Vault is making sure that they do.

BAYC and other IPFS Holders welp…

If you own a valuable piece of art worth thousands of dollars, you wouldn’t leave it in your unlocked back shed or out on the front step. You wouldn’t give it to someone you don’t know, and you wouldn’t leave it exposed to potential water, fire or unintentional damage. You’d keep it somewhere safe, store it in your house with extra security measures, or entrust it to a highly respected custodian so it never goes missing.

Just like physical items of significant value, crypto assets also need to be stored safely and sustainably for the long term. Currently, most NFTs use something called IPFS (InterPlanetary File System), a digital filing system that operates using content identifiers (CIDs) which can be likened to a unique cryptographic fingerprint. The CID is stored within the NFT’s metadata and provides a link to the digital asset’s location (usually off-chain). The idea is that if you search for a particular NFT, IPFS will ask its entire network if any of its nodes have the corresponding data for the unique CID being requested. If any of them do, the data is retrieved.

Risks have been identified with IPFS, mainly because it presents the chance, however small, for the digital asset’s data to be lost. In some cases, entire NFT collections have disappeared because of a ‘rug pull’, leaving nothing but a 404 error message behind. These ‘rug pulls’ are infrequent exit scams that involve hyping a project to gain traction on social media, and then taking the project offline while pocketing the investors’ funds. The servers are shut down and the owners of the NFTs are left empty-handed. Aside from intentional scams and deliberate removal of files from a centralized server, there is still no guarantee that the files that NFTs reference – files stored by an artist or by centralized servers – will be around forever. As a subscription service, IPFS users pay to keep their links valid over time. If for any reason, users aren’t able to continue making payments, IPFS is suddenly de-incentivized to store data, and it may eventually be lost.  

Culture Vault has chosen Arweave as an alternative solution to IPFS to help mitigate these risks through their decentralized, immutable approach to permanent data storage. Arweave is a network that connects those with disk space to spare with those who need permanent storage. Rather than a subscription service, Arweave charges a one-off fee upfront to pin content to the Arweave blockchain forever. The project has been praised by Sotheby’s, a giant in both the traditional and crypto art markets, as ‘the most robust decentralized storage solution’, and is becoming the go-to storage protocol for some of the space’s leading NFT projects. Arweave helps to provide users with greater guarantees that digital assets won’t be lost, become inaccessible, or destroyed whilst preserving data integrity and redundancy. 

How does Arweave achieve such high levels of data availability and security with its protocol? They use something called ‘block weave’ technology, which is specifically designed to ensure its users have permanent and uninhibited access to their content. Rather than being stored off-chain, where information is ​​prone to potential attack or degradation, Arweave’s data is stored directly on-chain using a set of blocks that each contains data and links back to multiple previous blocks within the network. This interwoven data structure uses a “Proof of Access” consensus mechanism, which requires miners to prove their access to old data before mining new blocks.

Also, unlike traditional blockchains where miners typically output large amounts of electricity in order to reach consensus, miners in the Arweave network are incentivized to replicate the valuable information already stored in the network by receiving tokens. This makes them more energy-efficient and means that Arweave’s mining mechanism is much more sustainable overall.

** At Culture Vault, we’re thrilled to be using the superior data storage solution offered by Arweave’s innovative technology. It allows us to guarantee that the NFTs minted by us will have digital assets that remain permanently available. For collectors, this means that if they purchase an NFT from Culture Vault, they can rest easy in the knowledge that the data which makes their NFT unique, beautiful, and valuable is forever stored on Arweave’s secure, decentralized network. For creators minting and listing their work on Culture Vault, it guarantees that their NFTs are protected, stored, and preserved into perpetuity. It also provides a sense of security that their work will never be removed from a server, or that the server will one day go offline. Together with Arweave, we are excited to create, preserve, and write NFTs into the history of the ‘permaweb’.**

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