Abstract

This study examines the emerging trend of museums integrating Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) into their permanent collections and the technical challenges they face in preserving these digital assets. Despite widespread media narratives declaring NFTs obsolete following the market downturn of 2022, leading cultural institutions have continued to embrace this technology as a legitimate form of artistic expression. The study traces institutional NFT adoption from early pioneers like the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna (2015) through recent major acquisitions by the Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Centre Pompidou.

While museums pursue NFTs for artistic merit and audience engagement, they encounter significant conservation challenges that most institutions are ill-equipped to address. These include blockchain-related costs for hardware and specialized programming languages, concerns about network decentralization and long-term viability, content storage complexities, and security vulnerabilities. The research reveals that established time-based media preservation challenges are compounded by blockchain-specific technical requirements, creating new institutional capacity demands. Museums must develop comprehensive pre-acquisition protocols, specialized staff expertise, and robust archival systems to ensure the long-term preservation of NFT-based artworks. This institutional adoption represents a critical juncture in legitimizing NFTs within art historical canon while highlighting urgent needs for technical infrastructure development in cultural preservation.

Introduction

While NFTs emerged as a mainstream phenomenon in 2021, their roots trace back to the early days of blockchains. One of the first digital artworks to be minted as an NFT in May 2014 was Kevin McCoy's "Quantum" (Liscia, 2021), predating the NFT boom by seven years. Forward-thinking institutions like the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna, the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, and the Whitney Museum in New York had already begun acquiring NFTs long before these digital assets gained widespread recognition. These early developments demonstrate how blockchain-based art had been developing incrementally for years prior to the Beeple sale of "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" capturing global attention.

The euphoric NFT boom of 2021-2022 quickly transformed into a cautionary tale of speculative excess, as market participants driven by inflated valuations and media hype eventually succumbed to growing skepticism about the sustainability of such price levels. By 2022, prices across most NFT collections had declined precipitously, with trading volumes and market capitalizations failing to recover their 2021 peaks, prompting widespread declarations of sector collapse. This dramatic market correction led critics to dismiss NFTs as a temporary aberration, conflating speculative trading dynamics with the underlying technological and artistic innovations that had been developing independently of market valuations (Hawkins, 2023; Klee, 2023).

The binary rhetoric of boom and bust obscured the more nuanced reality that while speculative trading had indeed crashed, the foundational infrastructure, artistic experimentation, and institutional engagement that predated the bubble continued to evolve. Recent scholarship reveals this complexity: research demonstrates that NFT pricing is driven by aesthetic and emotional factors rather than purely speculative fundamentals (Kaur Nagpal & Renneboog, 2024), while corpus analysis of major art market reports shows NFTs achieving mainstream institutional recognition despite remaining emergent in high-end segments (Poposki, 2024). These findings suggest that the cultural significance of NFTs extends beyond their market valuations, encompassing behavioral dimensions of digital ownership and evolving institutional valorization that persist independent of speculative cycles. The present study expands on this prior research to showcase how institutions have been interacting with NFTs and blockchain artists via acquisitions, exhibitions, and residencies, while also addressing the preservation challenges that museums face in maintaining long-term access to blockchain-based artworks.

Early days (2015 - 2021)

The Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna (MAK) pioneered institutional NFT collecting in 2015 when it became the first museum to acquire an NFT for its permanent collection (Ghorashi, 2015). The purchased work, Event Listeners by Harm van den Dorpel, is a generative piece employing line-based compositions overlaid with text to explore social relations. From an edition of 100, another copy was later acquired in 2017 by The Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe (ZKM). Beyond Event Listeners, ZKM's inaugural digital collection encompassed the iconic early NFT projects CryptoPunks and CryptoKitties. In the introductory page about CryptoArt, an exhibition dedicated to NFTs that was staged by ZKM in the middle of 2021, the exhibition curators recognized how NFTs have transformed the economics of digital art by providing scarcity to the market, while also pointing to the transparent nature and immutability of blockchains (ZKM, 2021).

Ironically, while ZKM was one of the first museums to interact with blockchains and NFTs, they were also one of the first to be challenged by the sheer technical complexity and abysmal user experience that plagued these technologies (and still does to this day, although to a lesser extent), leading to the loss of two out of the four CryptoPunks owned by the museum in 2021 (Batycka, 2022).

The Whitney Museum's early engagement with NFTs demonstrates institutional recognition of blockchain technology's potential to reimagine art ownership and access models. In 2018, the museum acquired an NFT from Eve Sussman's 89 Seconds Atomized collection, in which the artist fragmented the final artist proof of her acclaimed 2004 film 89 Seconds at Alcázar into 2,304 NFTs. This 'atomization' was designed to experiment with 'shared guardianship'—a novel ownership structure wherein the complete work could be exhibited at any venue provided all NFT holders consented to the screening. Given that the Whitney already held a traditional edition of Sussman's film in its permanent collection, the museum's decision to acquire one of the fragmented NFTs represented a deliberate curatorial strategy to participate in this experimental ownership model (Overbeek, 2022).

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated museum engagement with NFTs as revenue generation tools amid widespread financial pressures. Major institutions like the Uffizi Gallery, State Hermitage Museum, and British Museum capitalized on the 2021 NFT boom by selling digital versions of masterworks from their collections, generating substantial revenue through these novel monetization strategies. However, these initiatives faced significant criticism from industry (Bailey, 2021) and academia alike (Quiñones Vilá, 2023). They also raise longstanding concerns of museums’ commercial control over digital reproductions of public-domain artworks (Petri, 2014; Garvin, 2019). The backlash against these pandemic-era commercial experiments appears to have had a lasting impact, as museums have largely refrained from similar NFT monetization tactics since the initial wave of institutional sales, suggesting that the criticism effectively deterred further exploitation of the NFT trend for revenue generation.

The beginnings of institutionalization (2022 - today)

Buffalo AKG Museum (formerly known as Albright-Knox Gallery) organized Peer to Peer in November 2022, in cooperation with the online platform Feral File. This was a major milestone for art on the blockchain as it was the first retrospective organized by an American museum dedicated to blockchain artists (Buffalo AKG Art Museum, 2022). No surprise for the trends set by the museum; according to Tina Rivers Ryan, the museum’s curator at the time of the Peer to Peer exhibition, the Albright-Knox Gallery was the first museum to dedicate an exhibition to photography in 1910. In December 2022, after the conclusion of Peer to Peer, the museum acquired all sixteen artworks that were exhibited, creating the first major collection of blockchain artists for an art museum in the United States.

Worth noting in the aforementioned acquisition is that the museum did not actually acquire NFTs, except for a piece by Simon Denny, since in all but Denny’s case the NFT was not conceptually part of the artwork and only served as documentation, says Ryan (WAC Labs, 2023).  Denny’s work Metaverse Landscape 1: Decentraland Parcel -81, -17 is a conceptual piece that links a physical painting to an open edition of dynamic NFTs minted on the blockchain. Although the museum did not acquire an NFT edition for the rest of the artworks, they received 50% of the primary sales of the NFTs that were sold as part of the exhibition and will continue to receive 5% of royalties from secondary sales in perpetuity, according to the Feral File website.

Not long after Peer to Peer, in February 2023, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) struck a deal with the well-known pseudonymous collector Cozomo de’ Medici to receive a donation of 22 NFTs by 16 international artists that made LACMA the museum with the largest NFT collection in the US at the time. This acquisition by LACMA came on the back of a few other NFT acquisitions by the museum in the years prior to the Medici donation. In 2022, artist John Gerrard donated The Western Flag to the museum, followed by the estate of Lee Mullican donating ALMT28B.TGA, "Computer Joy", which Mullican developed during UCLA's Advanced Design Research Center's Program for Technology in the Art in the mid-1980s. In June 2022, Paris Hilton, well-known media personality and businesswoman, put together an acquisition fund for LACMA to acquire artworks by women artists. Through Hilton’s fund, NFTs by Krista Kim, Nancy Cahill Baker, and Shantell Martin have been added to the museum’s collection (Schwarz, 2023).

Centre Pompidou entered the NFT collecting sphere in February 2023 with a comprehensive acquisition of works by 16 artists, including French new media pioneers Claude Closky and Fred Forest alongside international figures such as Larva Labs (creators of CryptoPunks and Autoglyphs), Agnieszka Kurant, and Sarah Meyohas.  The museum's curators framed this acquisition as "an original study of the ecosystem of the crypto-economy and its impact on the definitions and contours of artworks, creators, collections and the receiving public" rather than mere trend-following (Centre Pompidou, 2023). Their selection process targeted three distinct artist categories: crypto-native artists, practitioners from web design, music, or text who achieved success through blockchain technologies, and established digital artists active since the 1990s who only recently gained institutional recognition. This taxonomic approach demonstrates the museum's analytical framework for understanding NFTs within broader art historical and technological contexts.

Following its NFT foray, Centre Pompidou has systematically expanded its blockchain-based collection through strategic acquisitions. In March 2024, the museum acquired Holly Herndon and Mathew Dryhurst's AI-generated video I'm Here 17.12.2022 5:44 and Robert Alice's BLOCK 10 (52.5243° N, -0.4362° E) from his Portraits of a Mind series. The museum further acquired Anne Spalter's AI-generated video The Wonder of it All, demonstrating sustained institutional engagement with both AI-generated art and blockchain technologies (Centre Pompidou, 2024).

MoMA entered the NFT collecting landscape in October 2023 through two significant donations: Refik Anadol's Unsupervised and Ian Cheng's 3FACE (MoMA, 2023). Anadol's work employs generative artificial intelligence to interpret and transform over 200 years of art from MoMA's permanent collection, creating a recursive dialogue between the museum's historical holdings and contemporary computational processes. The piece was donated by 1OF1 and the RFC Collection. Cheng's 3FACE comprises 4,096 adaptive artworks that analyze their owners' wallet data and online behavior to generate personalized visual portraits, with four editions donated to the museum by Outland Art.

The Whitney Museum expanded its NFT collection significantly throughout 2023, beginning with the acquisition of two works from LoVid's three-part Hugs on Tape series in May. In November, the museum acquired four editions of Ian Cheng's 3FACE (also donated by Outland Art), followed by 22 editions from Frank Stella's 100-piece NFT project Geometries and an Autoglyph by Larva Labs. These acquisitions demonstrate Whitney's strategic approach to collecting across different generations of digital artists, from established figures like Stella adapting to blockchain technologies to crypto-native creators like Larva Labs.

The Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio became the first institution to host an NFT artist residency in 2023, with Osinachi serving as the inaugural digital artist-in-residence under director Adam Levine, who had previously staged numerous digital art exhibitions at the museum. According to Levine, "We had been thinking about how we could fully engage with artists who create digitally, bringing artists into our community, and going into theirs. Our goal was to treat digital art as art, and to give them the opportunity to explore their own practice and really build on this notion of community" (Christie’s, 2023). The program continued in 2024 with Yatreda, an Ethiopian family of artists who create digital works in the style of tizita—a profound sense of nostalgia and longing for the past. Their residency culminated in Abyssinian Queen, which premiered in the exhibition Ethiopia at the Crossroads dedicated to Ethiopia's cultural heritage. The museum acquired NFT works from both artists upon completion of their respective residencies.

A growing number of prominent institutions—including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, House of Electronic Arts (HEK) and EPFL Pavilions in Switzerland, DEJI Art Museum in Shanghai, and Castello di Rivoli—have made NFT acquisitions. Rather than cataloging every institutional adoption, this study examines a notable paradox: despite widespread media narratives declaring NFTs obsolete following the market collapse of 2021-2022, museums have continued integrating blockchain-based works into their permanent collections. This sustained institutional engagement suggests a decoupling of curatorial assessment from market speculation, as museums legitimize NFTs through acquisition practices that position these works within the evolving canon of art history.

Challenges

While museums demonstrate increasing commitment to NFT collecting, this emerging technology presents significant preservation challenges that most institutions are ill-equipped to address. These concerns extend beyond museums to affect collectors and artists—essentially any NFT stakeholder. Regina Harsanyi, Associate Curator of Media Arts at the Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI), outlined these challenges at Digital Art Mile 2024 in Basel, addressing both blockchain-specific preservation issues involving NFTs and smart contracts as well as traditional time-based media conservation concerns that compound the complexity of maintaining digital artworks.

Blockchain-related costs

Hardware

Harsanyi identifies blockchain decentralization as creating significant data redundancy challenges, noting that node operators must store "multiple terabytes and counting" of data, which she characterizes as "incredibly cost-prohibitive." However, this redundancy represents an inherent architectural feature rather than a design flaw, as the replication of blockchain data across all nodes is fundamental to maintaining decentralized consensus. While decentralization offers certain advantages for digital art preservation, it does not constitute a comprehensive solution for data storage challenges. Until technological advances enable more efficient verification methods that do not require complete data storage at each node (Ethereum.org, 2024), this redundancy remains a necessary trade-off for maintaining blockchain integrity.

Ethereum's hardware requirements for node operation are more manageable than Harsanyi's concerns might suggest. As of June 2025, running an archival node requires 2–3 TB of storage with linear scaling. Full nodes, an alternative mode of operation that removes non-essential data over time, need approximately 1.2 TB. Nodes can be configured to retain specific pruned data if artworks depend on them. With 2 TB storage costing under $100 (Bendle, 2023), the total upfront investment for an Ethereum node ranges from $700–$1,500, with monthly operating costs of $60–$120. These figures demonstrate that individual node operation remains accessible.

Software

Blockchain preservation also involves dependency on platform-specific programming languages such as Solidity for Ethereum or Michelson for Tezos. These relatively new languages possess smaller developer communities compared to established programming languages, creating potential sustainability concerns for long-term preservation. This specialization presents challenges for museum conservators, who would need to develop technical expertise in blockchain programming to maintain these works independently. Such skills become particularly critical when considering future scenarios where languages may become obsolete, requiring code migration to newer platforms—especially in cases where artists or their estates are unavailable to assist with technical updates. However, potential migrations may conflict with artist intention, necessitating that museums address these preservation scenarios during the acquisition process to establish clear protocols for maintaining artistic integrity while ensuring long-term accessibility.

(De)centralization

Harsanyi also raised concerns about blockchain centralization, noting that many node operators rely on centralized providers like Infura, which deploys infrastructure on Amazon Web Services rather than maintaining truly decentralized networks. While this observation accurately describes execution client infrastructure, it overlooks a crucial technical distinction in Proof of Stake networks like Ethereum. For assessing true decentralization, consensus client diversity—the software responsible for blockchain validation—proves more significant than execution client distribution. Unlike execution clients, consensus clients maintain network integrity by validating transactions and keeping participants honest. Analysis of staking node operator diversity reveals a more decentralized landscape, with the largest operator controlling less than 5% of staking nodes as seen in Figure 1. This technical nuance suggests that while infrastructure dependencies exist, the fundamental consensus mechanism remains sufficiently decentralized to maintain blockchain security and integrity.

The critical metric for evaluating network security lies in the distribution of actual ETH stake that secures the network. Entities controlling more than 33% of total stake could theoretically launch specific attacks such as transaction censorship or block finality delays, while those exceeding 51% could enable more severe exploits like double-spending. As seen in Figure 2, Lido holds approximately 26% of network stake as a community governed by the Lido DAO, followed by SSV, Coinbase, and Binance. However, these entities function as staking service providers rather than direct stakeholders, operating on behalf of clients who retain underlying ownership. This structure creates natural disincentives against malicious behavior, as attacks would undermine client confidence and threaten the providers' business models. With the largest entity holding well below the 33% threshold, current stake concentration remains within acceptable security parameters. Moreover, even if major entities could theoretically reach attack thresholds, their role as service providers operating on client assets creates strong economic disincentives against network manipulation, indicating that Ethereum's consensus mechanism maintains sufficient decentralization to resist attacks.

A comparative analysis of decentralization metrics across major NFT-supporting blockchains, including Bitcoin, Tezos, and other emerging platforms, would provide valuable insights into network security variations, though such analysis extends beyond the scope of this study.

Immutability

In a follow-up interview conducted as part of this study, Harsanyi elaborated on blockchain limitations, arguing that "when you truly understand how different blockchain protocols function, you realize that none of them are as useful as claimed. They're not genuinely immutable." She identifies three specific challenges to immutability claims: NFTs managed through admin access that can compromise permanence, certain blockchains like Flow that lack inherent immutability, and questions about whether even supposedly immutable blockchains can maintain this promise indefinitely. These technical concerns highlight the gap between blockchain marketing rhetoric and operational reality. As market participants develop greater technical literacy, a natural selection process may emerge wherein artists migrate toward more secure networks offering stronger immutability guarantees, with collectors and institutions following these preferences. This evolution toward technically informed decision-making could ultimately drive the NFT ecosystem toward more robust and genuinely decentralized platforms.

Is the blockchain truly forever?

Adjacent to decentralization and immutability concerns is the question of blockchain network longevity. Developers must ensure that current infrastructure remains operational long-term, with contingency plans for network discontinuation that preserve artwork functionality. Potential solutions include deploying final network states in read-only mode or migrating works to alternative networks, though migration depends on artwork portability and absence of network-specific dependencies that cannot be replicated elsewhere. However, blockchain cessation represents primarily a social rather than technical challenge, creating significant implications for artwork functionality. Even works requiring continuous block production could theoretically be preserved through museum-operated nodes functioning independently of broader network participation, though such isolated operation may conflict with artists' original intentions. These scenarios underscore the necessity for museums to engage proactively with artists during acquisition, establishing clear preservation protocols that balance technical feasibility with artistic integrity while planning for various network lifecycle contingencies.

Where does the content live?

NFTs typically rely on an architectural separation between on-chain and off-chain components: the blockchain stores a reference pointer (such as a URI or a content identifier), while the actual content—images, videos, or metadata—resides externally on platforms like IPFS, Arweave, or traditional web servers (Wang et al., 2022; Balduf et al., 2022). This design introduces critical complexities: NFT owners face ongoing responsibilities to ensure the persistent availability of their assets at these off-chain locations, as even decentralized storage solutions can suffer from node churn and incomplete data replication (Balduf et al., 2022; Salem & Mazzara, 2024). Notably, studies have highlighted that approximately 21% of NFT metadata links are either broken or point to duplicate or inaccessible resources (Wang et al., 2022).

Given these challenges, it is imperative that artists, collectors, and their estates retain the ability to update or redirect these off-chain references within NFT smart contracts. This flexibility would mitigate the risk of digital asset decay and ensure sustainable long-term management of NFTs (Salem & Mazzara, 2024). Such governance mechanisms are crucial not only for preserving cultural and economic value but also for supporting the authenticity and provenance claims that underpin NFT markets.

Security

Multi-signature wallets ('multisigs') are specialized blockchain accounts requiring authorization from multiple designated parties before asset transfers, providing enhanced security and governance compared to standard single-signature accounts (Antonopoulos, 2015). Analysis of Ethereum accounts belonging to major NFT-collecting institutions reveals that nearly all museums operate single-signature wallets, with Centre Pompidou representing the sole exception utilizing multisig security. This finding emerges from examination of accounts associated with Castello di Rivoli, Centre Pompidou, LACMA, MAK Vienna, MoMA, MoMI, Toledo Museum of Art, Whitney Museum, and ZKM. The prevalence of single-signature configurations creates potential security vulnerabilities, as any compromise of the controlling device could result in complete asset loss. While many institutions likely employ hardware wallets to mitigate such risks, this security measure cannot be verified through public blockchain data, highlighting a gap between recommended security practices and institutional implementation in the museum sector.

Time-based media art challenges

Beyond the inherent complexities posed by blockchain technology, the conservation of time-based media art presents its own set of challenges (Barok et al., 2019; Engel & Wharton, 2017). These include the ongoing upkeep required to ensure that artworks remain functional and accessible; the need to maintain compatibility with contemporary computer systems despite rapid technological obsolescence; as well as considerations around hardware material usage, electricity consumption, and the environmental impact of digital infrastructures (Harsanyi, 2024). According to Harsanyi, most museums lack the dedicated resources, expertise, and technical frameworks necessary to effectively address these challenges, leaving significant gaps in digital preservation strategies.

During her talk at the Digital Art Mile 2024, Harsanyi detailed MoMI’s digital artwork acquisition process. She outlined the museum’s approach to assessing long-term viability, ensuring that artworks can be migrated or emulated as technology evolves, and developing sustainable practices that account for energy and material consumption. These insights underscore the need for holistic, institution-wide strategies to conserve digital art beyond the blockchain, bridging technical, curatorial, and infrastructural considerations to secure cultural heritage in the digital era.

Pre-acquisition considerations

Prior to acquisition, conservators must thoroughly understand the technical underpinnings of the artwork, including its software dependencies, programming languages, and the potential ease—or difficulty—of long-term maintenance (Harsanyi, 2024). This technical literacy is crucial for developing informed strategies for ongoing preservation, migration, or emulation as systems evolve. In the case of MoMI, for example, a Submission Information Package (SIP) from the artist or previous owner is expected to contain not only the digital artwork itself but also a checksum—a cryptographic identifier that verifies data integrity—alongside comprehensive supplemental documentation, including images and other metadata that contextualize the work (Harsanyi, 2024). Such documentation ensures that curators and conservators possess the necessary information to manage the artwork’s authenticity, functionality, and cultural value over time.

Artist consultation

A thorough technical questionnaire and an in-depth interview with the artist are essential components of the acquisition process. These steps help conservators understand the artist’s display preferences and intentions, including whether aspects such as orientation, resolution, or format flexibility are acceptable or integral to the artwork’s identity (Harsanyi, 2024). Engaging directly with the artist in this way allows institutions to document critical information about the work’s conceptual and technical requirements, which, in turn, guides future preservation decisions and ensures that the artist’s vision is respected even as technologies evolve.

Archival practices

Once acquired, the digital artwork must be meticulously archived to ensure its long-term preservation and accessibility. At MoMI, this process involves creating an Archival Information Package (AIP), in which all files undergo checksum validation to confirm their integrity (Harsanyi, 2024). Data is then stored on a Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) system to protect against hardware failure, with offsite backups maintained in separate geographic locations to mitigate risks of local disasters or infrastructure loss. In addition to these digital safeguards, a magnetic tape backup—typically Linear Tape-Open (LTO)—is employed as a non-digital archival solution, which conservators replace every three to five years to prevent data degradation (Harsanyi, 2024). Annual audits of the AIP, including checksum revalidation and bit-level integrity checks, further ensure the artwork’s stability over time. This multi-layered approach exemplifies best practices in digital preservation, addressing both technological and environmental vulnerabilities inherent in time-based media art.

Institutional capacity

Few museums possess the necessary resources to adequately preserve time-based media art, which demands not only specialized conservators but also robust information technology departments and infrastructure capable of managing complex digital objects (Barok et al., 2019; Harsanyi, 2024). The availability of trained time-based media conservators remains limited, and many institutions struggle to build and sustain the requisite expertise internally. Pre-acquisition protocols—including comprehensive technical assessments and risk analyses—are critical to ensuring the long-term viability of digital works. Yet, according to Harsanyi (2024), even major museums often neglect to conduct such protocols systematically, leaving significant gaps in preservation planning and potentially undermining the sustainability of their digital collections.

NFT relevance

Harsanyi (2024), along with the Buffalo AKG Museum case—where, as part of the Peer to Peer exhibition, the museum consciously chose not to acquire NFTs as certificates of authenticity—underscores the importance of museums understanding the total cost of ownership for digital artworks. This consideration encompasses not only acquisition expenses but also the ongoing technical maintenance required to sustain these works over time. A holistic perspective is essential for effective stewardship, ensuring that digital artworks remain accessible and functional in the long term.

Furthermore, the relationship between blockchain-based artworks and NFTs warrants careful consideration. While NFTs often serve merely as digital receipts that reference a particular work, they are rarely integral to the artwork’s concept or display (Wang et al., 2022; Balduf et al., 2022). Museums should explicitly clarify with artists whether an NFT holds conceptual significance, particularly when the token itself does not contain essential aspects of the artwork’s media, behavior, or experience.

Such clarification helps museums streamline their collections and avoid unnecessary technical complexity. However, it also carries potential reputational risks for both the artist and the institution. For example, if an artist previously sold an NFT and later downplays its significance when approached by a museum, this inconsistency could be perceived as contradictory and might provoke backlash from collectors who initially purchased the NFT as an authentic part of the artwork’s value. These challenges highlight the delicate balance institutions must strike in managing digital art acquisitions while maintaining transparency and trust with artists and collectors alike.

Conclusion

The institutional art world’s increasing engagement with blockchain technology is undeniable, providing both validation for digital creators and new avenues for established institutions to evolve their practices. Museums are actively incorporating blockchain-based artworks into their programming and collections, reflecting a broader commitment to embracing emerging digital mediums. Various initiatives—including exhibitions, commissions, and artist residencies—illustrate how institutions are reimagining traditional collecting paradigms to remain relevant within the rapidly evolving contemporary art landscape.

However, this transformation is not without significant challenges. Museums and collectors must navigate the technological complexities introduced by blockchains while addressing the inherent conservation issues surrounding time-based media art. The preservation of digital works requires a systematic approach to documentation, storage, and display that many institutions are still unaware of. Additionally, questions around ownership, provenance, and the relationship between physical and digital manifestations of artwork continue to evolve.

The future of blockchains and NFTs in the art world will likely be shaped by those who can thoughtfully bridge the current gaps — embracing technological innovation while honoring artistic intent and ever-evolving collecting values. As artists, museums, and other market participants continue to explore these digital frontiers, their success will depend on developing robust strategies that encompass both technological understanding and artistic vision, ensuring that blockchain-based art fulfills its potential as a significant chapter in art history rather than a passing technological curiosity.

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Wac Labs. (2023). Who holds the keys? The issues with putting NFTs in the museum collection. Medium. Retrieved June 8, 2025, from https://medium.com/@wac-lab/who-holds-the-keys-the-issues-with-putting-nfts-in-the-museum-collection-f41ddc5d6150

Wang, Z., Gao, J., & Wei, X. (2022). Do NFTs’ owners really possess their assets? A first look at the NFT-to-asset connection fragility. arXiv preprint arXiv:2212.11181. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2212.11181

ZKM. (2024). CryptoArt. Retrieved June 8, 2025, from https://zkm.de/en/exhibition/2021/04/cryptoart

Mitchell F. Chan is a conceptual artist born in 1982 in Canada, currently based in Toronto. He has been involved in the art world with new media installations and exhibitions across North America since 2006. Chan studied architecture and a lot of his early career was dedicated to public art, making large scale sculptures in parks and plazas. [1]

Over time his art progressively dematerialized – evolving from architecture and large scale sculptures to technology-infused gallery installations. His 2016 solo debut, Something Something National Conversation (In 2 Characters or Less) at Toronto's Angel Gallery, exemplified this transformation. The exhibition featured an installation where two clouds of water vapor emerged from opposite walls, floated toward each other, collided briefly, and then dissolved into nothingness.  Created just one month after Donald Trump's presidential election, the work explored "a sense of powerlessness and puzzlement over the state of our current public discourse." [2]

Given Chan's fascination with dematerialization, blockchain technology represented a natural evolution for his artistic practice. His 2017 work Digital Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility marked his foray to NFTs — an important moment that distinguished him as one of the first artists to exhibit and mint blockchain-based artwork within a traditional gallery setting (InterAccess in Toronto). [3]

More significantly, Digital Zones explored blockchain's unique capacity to separate an artwork's commodity form from its experiential essence. The piece deliberately echoes French avant-garde artist Yves Klein's conceptual masterwork, Zone de sensibilité picturale immatérielle (Zone of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility), reimagining Klein's radical explorations of immateriality through the lens of blockchain technology.

From 1959 to 1962, Klein executed Zone de sensibilité picturale immatérielle across multiple series, selling "immaterial zones" — essentially nothing material — in exchange for pure gold, with the required payment progressively doubling across successive series. Upon transaction, collectors received a receipt documenting their ownership of this invisible artwork. To complete the conceptual exchange, Klein invited collectors to participate in a transformative ritual: burning their receipt while Klein ceremonially cast half the gold payment into the Seine River, returning it to nature, while retaining the remainder. Through this elaborate performance of exchange and immateriality, Klein challenged conventional notions of artistic value and ownership, demonstrating that profound aesthetic experiences could transcend physical objects—a radical concept at the time that presciently anticipated today's digital art discourse.

In Chan's contemporary reinterpretation, Ethereum blockchain technology replaces Klein's paper receipts, with digital tokens serving as certificates of ownership. Chan’s version of an immaterial zone was a blank screen that each token linked to. The financial mechanism was reimagined by accepting Ethereum's native cryptocurrency (ETH) as payment, automatically retaining half while algorithmically "burning" the remainder when collectors destroy their digital receipts. This technological approach echoes Klein's Seine River ritual. Finally, a bonding curve pricing mechanism was used, ensuring that each subsequent token in the limited edition of 101 receipts commanded a progressively higher price in order to recreate Klein’s value escalation model.

Digital Zones reached its market apex in October 2021, when in Chan’s first auction house appearance at Sotheby’s, one of the receipt sold for $1,532,500. [4] Since the project’s release, prominent crypto figures such as Justin Sun [5] and organizations like FingerprintsDAO [6] have added Digital Zones in their collections. In the current market climate, the collection floor price has stabilized at valuations ranging around $20,000, demonstrating enduring collector interest.

2022 was an important year in Chan’s oeuvre as he started building games as artworks. Winslow Homer's Croquet Challenge is a digital game that can be played by anyone on the internet or by collectors as an application on their computer. The game reenacts Winslow Homer’s painting The Croquet Players (1865), in which the player uses characters modeled after the figures in the painting to play croquet within a recreation of the painting’s gilded frame. The game is a reminder that art — like games or politics or war — takes place within a defined arena according to a set of rules, and that certain ideas, facts, or people must be included or excluded for this arena to be maintained. It also touches on the sexual politics of this era, which saw the birth of the women’s suffrage movement. [7] Buffalo AKG Art Museum owns the original painting by Winslow Homer and as part of their first retrospective on blockchain artists in December 2022, they acquired Winslow Homer's Croquet Challenge and sold NFT editions of the work to the public.

Chan continued launching games in 2023 and exhibited in various museums such as ArtScience Museum in Singapore or HEK in Basel. He entered the PFP bandwagon with his game The Boys of Summer [8] but this game was unlike any other PFP project. “The Boys of Summer is inspired by the idea that statistics and numbers are the tools we use to tell very complicated stories” the artist says. The game is centered around a baseball player. Initially as you play the game, you get to manage baseball-specific attributes of the player but soon you are faced with unrelated aspects of the player’s social life, time spent studying in school, sex life, bank financials, and other mundane concerns. The game degenerates to absurdity until the player dies, serving as a stark critique of the quantification of self and the commodification of data.

In January 2024, Chan made his second appearance at a major auction house with the primary sale of Web3 Buddha at Christie's. This digital artwork, conceptualized as an interactive game exploring self-discovery and meditation within our accelerating media landscape, sold for $10,671. [9]

Mitchell F. Chan’s career traces a compelling arc from materiality to immateriality, with blockchain emerging as both a medium and a catalyst for this evolution. His works reveal how blockchain can expand the possibilities of art, offering new ways to explore ownership, value, and participation beyond the physical object. Chan’s adoption of blockchain is not merely technological but conceptual — aligning with his long-standing interests in dematerialization, public discourse, and the systems that shape our lives. In his hands, blockchain becomes more than a tool: it is a philosophical platform, inviting artists and audiences alike to rethink how art is created, shared, and understood in an increasingly digital world.

[1] Art NFT Linz - Anika Meier in Conversation with Mitchell F. Chan, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR9PTxS6a7c.

[2] “Mitchell Chan: Something... | Exhibitions | MutualArt,” accessed April 9, 2024, http://www.angellgallery.com/exhibitions/upcoming.

[3] “Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Conceptual Art | InterAccess,” accessed April 9, 2024, https://interaccess.org/event/2017/bitcoin-ethereum-and-conceptual-art.

[4] Sotheby’s Metaverse [@Sothebysverse], “#AuctionUpdate Digital Zone of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility Sells for $1,532,500 USD. It Is One of the First Blockchain-Based Artworks to Situate the Technology within a Longer History of Conceptual Art and Its Discourse of Dematerialization. #NativelyDigital Https://T.Co/c8DAVz0HzF,” Tweet, Twitter, October 26, 2021, https://x.com/Sothebysverse/status/1453077485101350913.

[5] “Justin Sun Acquired NFTs of Digital Zones, One of the Earliest NFT Projects, for $2 Million,” Yahoo Finance, October 11, 2021, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/justin-sun-acquired-nfts-digital-121500771.html.

[6] Fingerprints DAO, “‘Mitchell Sells Broken Link!’. Why Fingerprints Acquired An Empty NFT,” Medium (blog), May 15, 2021, https://fingerprintsdao.medium.com/mitchell-sells-broken-link-why-fingerprints-acquired-an-empty-nft-770d502795a7.

[7] “Winslow Homer’s Croquet Challenge,” accessed April 9, 2024, https://chan.gallery/croquetchallenge/.

[8] “The Boys of Summer,” accessed April 9, 2024, https://chan.gallery/boysofsummer/.

[9] “Digital Art Auction | Christie’s 3.0 | Web3 Buddha,” accessed April 9, 2024, https://nft.christies.com//nft/web3-buddha.

Ana María Caballero is a multidisciplinary artist, born in 1981 in Miami, raised in Colombia, and currently based in Madrid, Spain. She is a distinguished poet and author with her work exploring motherhood and the tension between biological processes and their cultural implications. Caballero has created waves for poetry in the NFT space not only with her works but also with the foundation of theVERSEverse to support other poets and the establishment of poetry as art. [1]

She graduated from Harvard in 2003 with a BA in Romance Studies. A bit later, at the start of the 2010s, blogging was her foray to the online world with her blog called The Drugstore Notebook. [2] From very early on, Caballero did not only publish poems and other types of texts but also tried to uplift other poets. She started organizing poetry contests in her blog, sometimes with interesting rules such as only accepting submissions of poems that have been rejected from publications at least three times. “A poetry contest for rejects” as she pointed out in a podcast. [3]

Caballero’s first success in the world of writing would come in 2014 with a collection of her Spanish poems submitted under the name Entre domingo y domingo winning Colombia’s José Manuel Arango National Poetry Prize and making her the first woman to win that specific award. [4] She will later proceed to publish this set of poems in her homonym book. [5]

A major motivation for Caballero was the cumbersome nature of traditional poetry publishing, which requires submitting work to publications, paying review fees, and waiting months for a response—often without any guarantee of acceptance. Moreover, most poems are rejected, and the readership of these publications remains limited. While digitizing her poems to make them more accessible online, Caballero discovered NFTs in 2021 and recognized the technology’s potential as an alternative publishing route for poets.

Her first poems to sell as NFTs are seven poems in August 2021 as part of the Etherpoems: Spoken Word collection, a sale which also included 20 other poets and 160 poems in total.

Three months later, in November 2021, Caballero co-founded theVERSEverse alongside Kalen Iwamoto and Sasha Stiles. theVERSEverse is the first digital gallery dedicated to poetry, with the core mission being to empower poets creatively and financially, promote poetry as art, and establish the future of literature on the blockchain. [6] As part of theVERSEverse's curatorial framework, acclaimed poets are onboarded into Web3 and paired with crypto native artists to create unique works of poetic art, while text-based artists already active in the NFT space are elevated through their conceptual approach. Finally, the craft and creativity of generative text is explored through their GenText series, which produces limited edition text blocks by combining the talents of artists, poets, and an AI-powered writing tool. [7]

Throughout 2023, Caballero performed her poetry in numerous venues across the world, inviting audience members to write down one-word responses to her poems on sheets of paper. One audience member left an origami swan. Subsequently, she used them as input to generate digital origami paper structures with the use of AI, wanting to pay homage to paper by presenting it as the message in and of itself, not solely as a medium for messages. 100 resulting digital paper origamis formed the Paperwork collection that was released in November 2023.

artifacts is a collection of 100 digital coins that Caballero released in September 2023 in collaboration with Alex Estorick. This is another project where, similarly to Paperwork, Caballero expands her artistic practice beyond poetry. The digital coins display AI-generated images of alternative histories focused on motherhood, family, and domesticity, thereby posing the question: what might these kinds of images mean when minted onto currency? “A coin is never just a coin. It’s a token of cultural value” the artists utter in a short clip that presents the collection. The stories of the subjects are simple but their identities remain unknown. In this way artifacts contests history by displacing value from established, patriarchal power and situating it in everyday homes. The collection was sold out in under 24 hours for ~$16,000.

Almost a year later, in August 2024, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, organized Money Talks, an exhibition that explored the place of money in society, starting from Roman, Chinese and Islamic coins of ancient times all the way to cryptocurrency. The museum curators commissioned Caballero and Estorick to create a new version of artifacts for the Oxford Crown so that the museum would be introduced into NFTs and AI in art. The Oxford Crown NFT was included in the exhibition and became the first NFT collected by the museum. [8]

The Francisco Carolinum in Linz became the second museum to acquire a work from Caballero. In December 2024, the museum announced via X the acquisition of five editions from Fifty Ways of Looking at a Poem. [9] Caballero had invited 50 people earlier in the year to annotate the same poem, capturing their experiences through handwritten marginalia, and expanding poetry in the realm of participatory art.

The epitome of Caballero’s success is the Sotheby’s auction of Cord in January 2024 for $11,430 [10] which will make Caballero the first living poet to ever sell a poem at Sotheby’s and Cord the first digital poem to be sold at Sotheby’s. Cord is about the ties that bind, both visible like umbilical cords and invisible like family relationships. When Caballero was asked to provide a poem as part of the Sotheby’s auction, she immediately thought of using Cord as minting it on the blockchain would also be a play on how relationships form both visible and invisible ties in the digital art space too.

Caballero's growing presence in the art world was further reinforced in 2024 when her project Being Borges, a series of AI-generated photographs examining language biases in large datasets, was exhibited at Paris Photo, [11] while she performed Paperwork for a Digital Dialogues talks program at Art Basel Miami Beach.

Beyond the use of technology, Caballero uses her own body to perform while reciting her poems like in Waiting Room (2024). A strong influence for the artist to explore performative poems has been the crowd’s reaction to her public poem recitals. Hence she performs her verses on screen, using her own body to speak the language of the poem, exploring how the physical body ties to the verse. Waiting Room was sold in June 2024 to a private collector for $10,000. [12]

In Echo Graph, her first solo show at Office Impart in Berlin, Caballero continues to expand her artistic practice by exploring language through various mediums, including blockchain, artificial intelligence, and performance. The exhibition presents a single poem in multiple forms, examining how the medium through which verse is experienced shapes its meaning. Echo Graph ran from February 20 to April 4, 2025. [13]

In parallel to her journey in the NFT market, Caballero’s manuscripts are starting to garner more attention from the writing world. Her first nonfiction manuscript, A Petit Mal, was awarded the International Beverly Prize and was a finalist to myriads of other contests, eventually published in 2023. Mammal, her most recent manuscript, was awarded the 2022 Steel Toe Books Poetry Prize and was published in 2024, making it Caballero’s 7th book.

Based on Caballero's artistic practice, we can see that NFTs have opened significant new possibilities for poetry and text-based art that traditional publishing could not provide. Her journey demonstrates how blockchain technology has transformed poetry from a medium historically constrained by limited publishing opportunities and readership into collectible digital art with tangible value. By minting poems as NFTs, Caballero not only found an alternative route to publication that bypassed traditional gatekeepers and their cumbersome processes, but also elevated poetry to visual art status, allowing it to enter prestigious spaces like Sotheby's auctions and museum collections. Her work with theVERSEverse further illustrates how NFTs can build supportive ecosystems for undervalued art forms. Perhaps most significantly, Caballero's practice reveals how NFTs have enabled the expansion of poetry beyond text into multimedia, collaborative, and performative expressions—incorporating AI, performance, and audience participation—creating novel art forms that challenge traditional boundaries between literary and visual arts while establishing new economic models for creators working with intangible mediums.

[1] “Mission - theVERSEverse,” May 24, 2022, https://theverseverse.com/mission.

[2] thedrugstorenotebook, “The Drugstore Notebook,” Tumblr, Portable poetry and books on display., accessed April 1, 2024, https://thedrugstorenotebook.tumblr.com/.

[3] Kaloh, “From Ink to Blockchain Poetry Ft Ana Maria Caballero,” March 21, 2024, https://www.kaloh.xyz/p/ink-to-blockchain-poetry-ana-maria-caballero.

[4] “Premio Nacional de Poesía,” Instituto de Cultura El Carmen de Viboral, accessed April 1, 2024, https://culturaelcarmen.gov.co/eventos/premio-nacional-de-poesia/.

[5] “Entre Domingo y Domingo,” Ana Maria Caballero, accessed April 25, 2025, https://anamariacaballero.com/entre-domingo-y-domingo-2/.

[6] “Mission - theVERSEverse,” May 24, 2022, https://theverseverse.com/mission.

[7] “Framework - theVERSEverse,” May 27, 2022, https://theverseverse.com/framework.

[8] “A NEW OXFORD CROWN FOR THE AGE OF AI & NFTs,” accessed March 20, 2025, https://www.ashmolean.org/article/a-new-oxford-crown-for-the-age-of-nfts-and-ai.

[9] OÖ Kultur [@ooeculture], “💥 Excited to Announce That the Final Five Digital Editions of @CaballeroAnaMa ’s ‘Fifty Ways of Looking at a Poem’ Are Joining Our Collection. 📝 The Series Invites Fifty People to Annotate the Same Poem, Capturing Their Experiences through Handwritten Marginalia. 🧵 Https://T.Co/sJtAxWHk4G,” Tweet, Twitter, December 30, 2024, https://x.com/ooeculture/status/1873709739223449888.

[10] “CORD | Natively Digital: An Ordinals Curated Sale | Contemporary NFT,” Sotheby’s, accessed April 1, 2024, https://www.sothebys.com/buy/cc1a07f8-f41b-4cc3-9d7a-e32360d2a356/lots/c99cc23c-dc24-4bb7-a6fe-a5b5da8f27b7.

[11] “Being Borges,” Ana Maria Caballero, accessed March 20, 2025, https://anamariacaballero.com/being-borges-2/.

[12] “Waiting Room,” Verisart, accessed March 20, 2025, https://verisart.com/works/ana-maria-caballero-c0899ad1-f28c-4319-b471-8783ffa9e4d7.

[13] “Ana María Caballero – Echo Graph / Exhibitions / Exhibitions / OFFICE IMPART,” OFFICE IMPART, accessed March 31, 2025, https://officeimpart.com/ana-maria-caballero-echo-graph.

Osinachi is a self-taught digital artist based in Lagos, Nigeria. Born in 1991, he grew up in Aba, where before developing an interest in visual art, he had a passion for writing and literature. [1] He wrote poems, plays, short fiction stories, and essays, and was an active member of the writing community of the University of Nigeria. In one of his essays, A Man and his Breasts, Osinachi goes over his struggles of growing up with gynecomastia, which deeply affected his perception of masculinity, a theme that he explored in depth later on in his art. [2]

In parallel to being a passionate writer, Osinachi was involved with digital art from very early in his life. In 2005, he discovered the drawing tools in Microsoft Word at a cyber cafe that he frequented to type his scripts. “I started exploring [the drawing tools] and took a deep interest in it. Whenever I saw a computer or laptop, I would head straight to Microsoft Word and start trying to create things.” [3] Eventually his passion for visual art will overtake that of writing, as it becomes easier for him to express himself through art. “I like giving my work room to evolve and that's not very easy for me in writing. I don't have the stamina to do a lot of writing, honestly." [3] He graduated from the university in 2014 and shortly after decided to pursue a career as an artist.

In 2018, he became the first-ever Nigerian artist to showcase artworks at the Ethereal Summit, a conference in New York that seeked to bridge the gap between technology and art through blockchain. Shortly afterwards he was shortlisted for the Bridgeman Studio Award 2019. In January 2019, he published A Boy Can Be Anything, his first work on SuperRare. His subsequent works on the platform are going to catapult his career.

2020 is a transformative year for the artist in terms of recognition and even more importantly his own style. While he continues to tackle topics of masculinity, LGTBQ rights, family life, and pop culture in Africa, he evolves the faux-naïf style that he utilized to add texture to his characters and starts using the signature dark gray color in bodies without eyes that accompanies his works to this day. At the same time, he starts using the GIF format in many of his works to animate his characters.

In March 2020 he had his first ever solo show named Existence as Protest at Kate Vass Galerie in Zurich. Jason Bailey, an early supporter of crypto art and Osinachi, writes in the foreword of the show: “Osinachi is a brilliant protest artist. Rather than depict dramatic scenes of struggle and conflict as is often typical with protest art, his weapon of choice is to highlight normalcy and positivity. His government has some of the most vicious anti-LGTBQ laws in the world, yet he chooses to celebrate this community in the face of these laws by showing its members happily living their lives as everyday human beings. By avoiding negativity and drama and simply presenting positive images of people just trying to live their lives, Osinachi completely defangs anti-LGBTQ propaganda. Rather than pour gas on a fire, he extinguishes it all together.” [4]

Beyond mentioning his grandmother when asked about his influences, Osinachi credits Devan Shimoyama, Tschabalala Self, and Njideka Akunyili-Crosby. He relates to Njideka’s art expressing what it was like to be raised as an Igbo child in an Igbo home. He appreciates Tschabalala for exaggerating the female figure and celebrating women, and Shimoyama for celebrating the male body. [5] Continuing his gradual exposure to the art world, Osinachi's Resignation and A Portrait of the Artist at 29 were exhibited in Art Basel 2021 at Galerie Nagel Draxler's Crypto Kiosk.

2021 also marked the peak of the crypto and NFT markets, with some of Osinachi's works trading above $100,000 in both primary and secondary markets. His highest selling work to date is Take The Stares, which Osinachi originally sold in January 2020 for just over $300, then was resold in August 2021 for $96,000, only to be flipped two months later for $180,000. [6] The final purchaser was the infamous hedge fund 3AC, which ironically went bankrupt a few months later, an event that exacerbated the crypto market crash of 2022. [7] As part of 3AC's liquidation proceedings, Take The Stares was auctioned at Sotheby's in January 2024 for $20,320, marking Osinachi's first appearance at the prestigious auction house. [8]

Before Sotheby’s, Osinachi had already established his presence in the major auction houses by auctioning works in the primary market at Christie’s. In October 2021 he auctioned Different Shades of Water at Christie’s London, a series of five works inspired by David Hockney’s Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) from 1972. This sale made him the first African artist to sell NFTs at Christie’s. [9] All five works sold for a total of £155,000. He would return to sell at Christie’s again two years later.

2022 proved to be a challenging year for the entire crypto industry, with artists in the NFT market feeling the impact as well. However, this was also the year when museums began seriously acquiring works from these artists for their permanent collections. In December 2022, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum acquired 16 artworks from NFT artists, establishing the first major collection of blockchain artists at an art museum in the United States. [10] One of the works acquired was Osinachi’s +rave-sing (traversing), which was also sold as an NFT edition of four to the public.

Osinachi's museum discourse continued into 2023 when he enrolled in an art residency at the Toledo Museum of Art, marking the first time in the institution's history that a digital artist was selected as a resident. According to Adam Levine, the museum's director: “We had been thinking about how we could fully engage with artists who create digitally, bringing artists into our community, and going into theirs. Our goal was to treat digital art as art, and to give them the opportunity to explore their own practice and really build on this notion of community, which is as important for us here as it is in the Web3 space.” [11] One of the notable outcomes of this residency was Abitt: The Second Renaissance is Coming, a work by Osinachi with imagery deeply rooted in Toledo's history and contemporary times. The piece was auctioned at Christie's for $16,864, with the Toledo Museum of Art acquiring the artist's proof.

Shooting: The Fire, another artwork created by Osinachi during his Toledo residency that illustrates how retaliatory responses perpetuate rather than resolve conflict, was acquired by The Museum of Art + Light in Manhattan, Kansas in March 2025. [12] Around the same time, Tennis Player, a self-portrait by the artist created in 2020, will be sold for more than $50,000 in the secondary market, [13] signifying how sought-after Osinachi's early GIF works have become.

Osinachi's journey from creating digital art on Microsoft Word in Nigerian cyber cafes to institutional recognition around the world exemplifies the art world's gradual but definitive institutionalization of digital and NFT art. He has established a presence in auction houses, art fairs, and galleries, though this institutional recognition has culminated with major museums incorporating his work into their permanent collections. Through these milestones Osinachi is actively playing a role in legitimizing digital art within traditional art world spaces.

[1] “The Writers’ Community: Young Writers in the University of Nigeria,” November 13, 2014, https://culturaldaily.com/the-writers-community-young-writers-university-of-nigeria/.

[2] “A Man and His Breasts - Cultural Daily,” December 17, 2015, https://culturaldaily.com/a-man-and-his-breasts/.

[3] “How Africa’s Foremost Crypto Artist Is Changing The Way We Perceive Masculinity — A NASTY BOY,” May 17, 2021, https://web.archive.org/web/20210517102523/https://anastyboy.org/home/how-nigerias-foremost-crypto-artist-is-changing-the-way-we-perceive-masculinity.

[4] “OSINACHI - EXISTENCE AS PROTEST,” Kate Vass Galerie, accessed April 25, 2025, https://www.katevassgalerie.com/osinachi-solo-show-2020.

[5] Alex Yates, “Osinachi’s Journey From Nigeria to NFTs,” Nft Now (blog), August 30, 2021, https://nftnow.com/art/osinachi-interview-nigeria-nfts/.

[6] “Authentic Digital Art - Take the Stares | SuperRare,” SuperRare | CryptoArt | NFT Art Marketplace | Digital Art, February 12, 2024, https://superrare.com/0xb932a70a57673d89f4acffbe830e8ed7f75fb9e0/take-the-stares-7030.

[7] MacKenzie Sigalos, “From $10 Billion to Zero: How a Crypto Hedge Fund Collapsed and Dragged Many Investors down with It,” CNBC, July 11, 2022, https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/11/how-the-fall-of-three-arrows-or-3ac-dragged-down-crypto-investors.html.

[8] “Take the Stares | GRAILS: Starry Night | Contemporary NFT,” Sotheby’s, accessed March 29, 2024, https://www.sothebys.com/buy/983c3072-ff7a-4bda-9c01-bc5af5334267/lots/82c19366-0f2b-40ab-9cbe-5d1bc30092f2.

[9] “Osinachi: NFT Sale with Christie’s,” daria borisova, accessed March 29, 2024, https://dariaborisova.com/osinachi.

[10] “A Collection of NFTs: The Buffalo AKG’s Historic Acquisition of Digital Art | Buffalo AKG Art Museum,” accessed March 29, 2024, https://buffaloakg.org/blog/collection-nfts-buffalo-akgs-historic-acquisition-digital-art.

[11] “Osinachi Is Rewriting Art History at the Toledo Museum,” accessed March 29, 2024, https://www.christies.com/en/stories/osinachi-at-the-toledo-museum-of-art-0948941366f24ef19c9d11739ebda421.

[12] “Permanent Collection Series – MoA+L,” accessed April 3, 2025, https://artlightmuseum.org/permanent-collection-series/.

[13] “Tennis Player, Osinachi, OpenSea,” accessed April 3, 2025, https://opensea.io/item/ethereum/0x2a46f2ffd99e19a89476e2f62270e0a35bbf0756/21178.

Sam Spratt has made a significant impact in digital art with his series of paintings centered on an australopithecus named Luci. This series culminated in The Monument Game and The Masquerade, two observation-based artworks and games hosted on Nifty Gateway in August 2023 and February–March 2025. Born in 1988 and based in New York, Spratt applies traditional painting techniques to digital canvases, drawing inspiration from the Renaissance and Baroque eras. Spratt has championed participatory art, inviting collectors to engage with and shape his evolving narrative.

Spratt spent many years working for clients such as Marvel, Netflix, Rockstar Games, FX Network, National Geographic, Warner Music, Kid Cudi, Janelle Monae, and more, and it wasn’t until October 2021 when he debuted I. Birth of Luci on SuperRare that he finally started weaving his own story.

I. Birth of Luci introduces Luci to the world: the main character of Spratt’s works to follow and a self-portrait, [1] serving as an homage to Lucy, an australopithecus who was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974 and is estimated to have lived around 3.2 million years ago. Spratt portrays himself as this ancient creature in a satirical self-reflection. The choice expresses his disappointment at feeling obsolete after realizing he had spent his career executing others' visions rather than his own.

The artwork sold for 50 ETH ($209,000) to Cozomo de Medici, an anonymous but well-known collector in the NFT space. [2] Seven more works will follow during the next two years, telling the story of Luci. Out of these works, the first six were auctioned via the online platform SuperRare for a total of ~$850,000. VII. Wormfood was auctioned at Christie’s in June 2022 during a sharp downturn of the NFT market for $252,000, more than twice its original upper estimate. [3] Lastly, VIII. Infinite Ceremony sold in February 2023, via the online gallery AOTM for ~$235,500. [4]

Equally exciting to Spratt’s market success is the way he proceeds to build out his community. One of the things enabled by NFT auctions on the blockchain is that bids and bidders are public for anyone to view which in turn can expand the dialogue between the artist and their potential collectors. Spratt was quick to realize this potential so he first proceeded to create The Blueprint Skull which was auctioned in March 2022, [5] then followed up with 49 more pieces derived from the original skull and distributed for free to a few people close to him and to all the bidders of his first three works (I. Birth of Luci, II. Lullabies For Isaac, III. First Sacrifice).

All 50 skulls form the Skulls of Luci collection and in turn the owners of these skulls are the Council of Luci, the inner circle of Spratt’s community that to this day provide advice and help to the artist while being part of his journey. As of March 2025 the Skulls of Luci have achieved $3 million in secondary market volume with the highest trade reaching $320,000 and the last few trades occurring in the range of $200,000.

IX. The Monument Game is Spratt’s ninth major work, developed over more than a year and released in August 2023. Inspired by his visit to Da Vinci’s The Last Supper in Milan, Spratt sought to explore how a grand, enduring masterpiece could exist in a digital format. Unlike traditional works, which can be contemplated in a museum at the viewer’s leisure, digital art often competes for fleeting attention in the fast-paced realm of social media. To counter this, Spratt, with the support of the Nifty Gateway team, created a dedicated website for The Monument Game, layering an interactive observation game onto the painting to deepen engagement. [6]

Only 256 players could participate in The Monument Game, requiring ownership of a Player edition. Each Player holder could leave a single, unalterable observation at a specific pixel in the artwork, permanently inscribed on the blockchain and linked to both The Monument Game and the Player edition forever.

The incentive? The top three observations, as determined by the Council of Luci, were rewarded with a Skull of Luci—three of which remained to be distributed. At the time, Skulls of Luci were trading between $100,000 and $150,000.

Around 50 Player editions were gifted by Council members, while the remaining 200 were sold on August 21, 2023, for ~$5,500 each, selling out in just two minutes and generating $1.2 million. [7] The game lasted three days following the sale, running alongside the auction for IX. The Monument Game, which ultimately sold for ~$700,000. As of March 2025, Player editions have generated more than $3 million in secondary market volume.

At the artist's request, some Players contributed personal reflections to the observation game, while others shared more casual comments or even texts generated by ChatGPT. Spratt developed an interactive experience that encouraged collector participation and engagement with the artwork. One of his primary requests to the Nifty Gateway team was to build the platform in a way that would allow other artists to use it for their own observation-based projects. Later, Nifty Gateway open-sourced the platform code, making it available for future artistic projects. [8]

Following The Monument Game, Spratt’s first solo show, took place in Venice during the 2024 Biennale. [9] Supported by 1OF1 Collection, the show exhibited Spratt's LUCI series while inviting visitors to re-enact the observation game in a physical space. Among the visitors who left observations were Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Uli Sigg, [10] and Hans Ulrich Obrist. [11]

“Kudos to the heroes who added a new feature to what to date has been an old medium  - painting!!!” Sigg wrote in his observation as observer 4, highlighting Spratt’s ingenuity in integrating others’ observations into his artistic practice. [12] However, integrating others' observations into painting is a longstanding tradition in Chinese art, particularly in handscroll paintings. In this tradition, it was customary for artists, collectors, and viewers to add inscriptions, seals, and colophons to the artwork. [13] Therefore, while Spratt's integration of audience observations into his LUCI series is innovative within the context of contemporary Western art, it aligns with a centuries-old practice in Chinese art where viewer engagement and contribution are integral to the artwork's evolution.

In February 2025, a year and a half after The Monument Game, Sam Spratt introduced X. The Masquerade, the tenth artwork in his LUCI series and his second observation game. Expanding on its predecessor, The Masquerade invited 613 players — holders of The Masks of Luci, a new collection that was released in parallel to the game — to engage not only by leaving observations but also by commenting on others’ observations and revising. Spratt closely followed the discourse, designing unique masks based on player activity. The Masks of Luci generated over $2 million in primary sales, while X. The Masquerade sold privately for $3 million — the highest NFT sale in three years. Following the completion of the game, Spratt announced that his Masks of Luci series were selected for inclusion in the upcoming exhibition Infinite Images: The Art of Algorithms that will take place at the Toledo Museum of Art from July until November 2025. [14]

Spratt’s ability to weave participatory art into digital formats is matched by his astute understanding of the art market’s mechanics. By intertwining narrative, scarcity, and community, he has transformed his latest releases into events — leveraging limited editions and gamified experiences to drive both engagement and sales. His use of blockchain, nurturing of his collector base, and iterative expansion of the LUCI universe reveal a deep sensitivity to the shifting landscape of value in the digital age. More than just an artist, Spratt has proven himself a savvy market participant, leveraging the discourse surrounding his work to unlock new commercial opportunities and further deepen his conceptual framework at the intersection of art, technology, and culture.

[1] Matt Medved, “Inside Sam Spratt’s Cult of Luci and The Monument Game,” Nft Now (blog), August 22, 2023, https://nftnow.com/features/inside-sam-spratts-cult-of-luci-and-the-monument-game/.

[2] “Authentic Digital Art - I. Birth of Luci | SuperRare,” SuperRare | CryptoArt | NFT Art Marketplace | Digital Art, accessed March 24, 2024, https://superrare.com/0xb932a70a57673d89f4acffbe830e8ed7f75fb9e0/i.-birth-of-luci-29436.

[3] “SAM SPRATT (B. 1988), VII. Wormfood | Christie’s,” accessed March 12, 2024, https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/cartography-mind-curated-nft-sale-benefit-maps/sam-spratt-b-1988-1/155318.

[4] “AOTM - VIII. Infinite Ceremony,” AOTM, accessed March 24, 2024, https://aotm.gallery/artwork/viii-infinite-ceremony/.

[5] “Authentic Digital Art - The Blueprint Skull | SuperRare,” SuperRare | CryptoArt | NFT Art Marketplace | Digital Art, August 12, 2023, https://superrare.com/0xb932a70a57673d89f4acffbe830e8ed7f75fb9e0/the-blueprint-skull-33019.

[6] Nifty Gateway, “Nifty Gateway,” Nifty Gateway, accessed March 26, 2024, https://www.niftygateway.com/collections/sam-spratt-the-monument-game.

[7] “A Discussion With Sam Spratt: How The Monument Game Is Redefining the NFT Landscape,” Gemini, accessed November 20, 2023, https://www.gemini.com/blog/discussion-with-sam-spratt-the-monument-game-redefining-nfts.

[8] “Nifty Gateway Releases Open Source Code for The Monument Game | Nifty Gateway,” Nifty Gateway Blog, accessed March 26, 2024, https://niftygateway.com/blog/nifty-gateway-releases-open-source-code-for-the-monument-game.

[9] Shanti Escalante-De Mattei, “In Venice, 1OF1 and Collector Ryan Zurrer Introduce Web3 Phenom Sam Spratt to the Art World,” ARTnews.Com (blog), April 17, 2024, https://www.artnews.com/art-news/artists/venice-biennale-sam-spratt-art-exhibition-monument-game-nfts-1234703518/.

[10] “Sam Spratt on Instagram: ‘Honored to Have Uli Sigg and Rita Sigg Come to The Monument Game Preview Here in Venice and Leave behind an Observation. Preservation.,’” Instagram, April 16, 2024, https://www.instagram.com/p/C51UcoYPVeO/.

[11] “Sam Spratt on Instagram: ‘Observer 16 @hansulrichobrist Leaving His Observation atop The Monument Game.,’” Instagram, April 17, 2024, https://www.instagram.com/p/C53UPqECp0D/.

[12] “The Monument Game by Sam Spratt,” Nifty Gateway Studio, accessed March 18, 2025, https://www.niftygateway.com/collections/sam-spratt-the-monument-game-exhibition/.

[13] “Home | East Asian Scroll Paintings,” accessed April 25, 2025, https://scrolls.uchicago.edu/?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

[13] “TOLEDO MUSEUM OF ART ANNOUNCES UPCOMING GENERATEIVE ART EXHIBITION AND THE 2025 DIGITAL ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE | Art Miami Magazine,” accessed March 20, 2025, https://artmiamimagazine.com/toledo-museum-of-art-announces-upcoming-generateive-art-exhibition-and-the-2025-digital-artists-in-residence/.