Sotheby’s is doubling down on NFTs with the launch of a secondary marketplace

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(Kitco News) – Art auction house Sotheby’s is wading deeper into the digital asset waters with the launch of its own secondary marketplace for art non-fungible tokens (NFT).

According to a report from NFT Now, the famous auction house wants to expand its Sotheby’s Metaverse – originally launched in October 2021 – and establish itself as the best art platform for the secondary market as well.

“When Sotheby’s Metaverse was first launched more than a year ago, our goal was to bring to market a first-of-its-kind platform that would be characterized by the expertise and vision of our specialists to curate sales of NFTs,” Sebastian Fahey, Sotheby’s Executive Lead for Metaverse said. “Now, we continue to advance and evolve our platform to provide new and more seamless ways for the community to discover and collect new forms of digital collectibles, from limited edition NFTs to unique works by artists who are redefining perceptions of digital art. “

The integrated sales system for the secondary marketplace will be fully on-chain via the Ethereum and Polygon networks, and users can pay with the native ETH or MATIC token.

Work from artists selected by Sotheby’s digital art specialists will be displayed on a rotating basis in the new marketplace. The first group of 13 artists included in the platform’s launch are Tyler Hobbs, Claire Silver, XCOPY, Diana Sinclair, IX Shells, Sarah Zucker, Refik Anadol, Sofia Crespo, Sam Spratt, Pindar van Arman, Osinachi, Hackatao and Sebastião Salgado.

Sotheby’s said it intends to use smart contracts to pay out artist royalties and will do so in accordance with each artist’s stated royalty rate on the chain.

Royalty payments have been a point of contention on other NFT platforms – including OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace by volume – with many platforms lowering the amount of royalties they pay out to artists in an attempt to attract more users and increase their market share.

Royalties have been key to attracting artists to the Web3 space and building the NFT ecosystem, and Sotheby’s wants to ensure it can attract top talent going forward, while leveraging its brand name to attract high-value bidders.

“Sotheby’s commitment to honoring artist royalties comes amid a larger debate about royalties in the NFT community and signals Sotheby’s artist-first ethos as one of the only major NFT marketplaces committed to artist resale royalties,” it said in the press release about the policy.

The company also plans to launch a new digital art gallery through the Web3 art gallery platform Oncyber in June which will feature selected works from the secondary market. Sotheby’s is partnering with well-known pseudonymous digital art collector Cozomo de’ Medici to curate one of the gallery’s rooms.

The launch of the new offering from Sotheby’s comes at an interesting time, as floor prices for even the most popular projects have fallen sharply while volumes in the NFT market are at 20-month lows.