Art auction giant Sotheby’s unveils On-Chain NFT Secondary Marketplace

by James · May 2, 2023

Large auction house Sotheby’s revealed a secondary non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace that allows users to buy curated NFTs on Ethereum (ETH) and Polygon (MATIC) network.

Sotheby’s is not new to the NFT space, and this time they decided to expand their offering with a curated, peer-to-peer secondary marketplace.

The sales system will be integrated and fully on-chain, allowing buyers to pay in ETH or MATIC, the native token of the two blockchains.

Furthermore, Sotheby’s Metaversewhich is the art auction house’s Web3 arm, will allow direct transactions between the platform’s users.

“Featuring a rotating, curated selection of leading artists hand-picked by Sotheby’s specialists, providing expert guidance and context for each work, from thematic presentations to artist spotlights, for an easy-to-navigate experience designed for discovery,” so the auction house Luksus on Twitter.

There is a 2.5% merchant fee, it added, while artist resale royalties will be remunerated directly on-chain through marketplace smart contracts. The platform will automatically pay artists according to the royalty rate they choose.

But “NFT owners are also free to take their NFTs to other exchanges that do not honor royalties,” Forbes reported.

Thirteen previously approved artists are allowed to sell their NFTs themselves before Sotheby’s has seen them, meaning they don’t have to run the art at the auction house. They will be able to sell existing and not-yet-made artwork.

The artists include Tyler Hobbs, Claire Silver, Sarah Zucker, XCOPYPY -0.1%, Diana Sinclair, IX Shells, Refik Anadol, Sofia Crespo, Sam Spratt, Pindar van Arman, Osinachi, Hackatao and Sebastião Salgado.

“The opportunity to expand Sotheby’s Metaverse with a peer-to-peer marketplace throughout the chain is an important step forward in our evolution in the digital art and collectibles space,” said Michael Bouhanna, Sotheby’s vice president and head of a press release. NFTs and digital art.

The nearly 300-year-old auction house entered the NFT space back in April 2021 and even hosted several record-breaking sales that year, as a CryptoPunk which sold for $11.8 million and a Bored Ape Yacht Club pieces that sold for 3.4 million.

More recently, in March this year, Sotheby’s organized a benefit auction in honor of International Women’s Day, entitled “My Body, My Business”, in partnership with UnicornDAOa collectors’ decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) devoted to women’s and gender-fluid NFTs.

In mid-April, the house revived its “Glitch: Beyond Binary” NFT auction after facing backlash over the lack of diversity with its initial launch.

Several days later, it was revealed that Sotheby’s was preparing to host an auction for a collection of the NFTs seized from the now-defunct crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC). It said it would auction the Grails collection, consisting of digital artworks belonging to 3AC and its Starry Night Capital NFT fundraising fund, in a bid to recoup some of the $3 billion the collapsed fund owes creditors.

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