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On Monday, May 1st, one of the world’s largest art brokers, Sotheby’s, announced its new, curated NFT marketplace through its Sotheby’s Metaverse auction house. According to the company’s Tweet, this will be a fully on-chain peer-to-peer marketplace through Ethereum and Polygon.
Sotheby’s Metaverse Offers New On-Chain NFT Marketplace
One of the world’s largest art brokers, Sotheby’s, announced on Monday that its web3-focused auction house is getting its secondary NFT marketplace. Sotheby’s Metaverse will now offer on-chain sales of select non-fungible tokens. Transactions will be executed through Ethereum and Polygon blockchains.
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.
Additionally, according to the announcement, it is set to be curated, and peer-to-peer. Sotheby’s Metaverse will also honor artist royalties directly through on-chain marketplace smart contracts. The marketplace will also have a 2.5% percent seller fee. Already at launch, the platform will offer pieces by 13 prominent artists.
Sotheby’s was established in 1744 in London. The company took an interest in non-fungible tokens and founded its web3-focused Sotheby’s Metaverse already in 2021 near the height of the popularity of non-fungible tokens. Despite the relative decline in interest through the “crypto winter” of 2022, the company has remained committed to its digital collectibles business.
NFTs Increasingly Seen as Cultural Artifacts
Considering its centuries-long prominence in the art world, Sotheby’s involvement with non-fungible tokens certainly lends credence to their claim of being cultural artifacts. Additionally, the broker has been increasingly active in the space and has, just weeks ago, announced a multi-stage auction of various blue-chip NFTs in its possession.
Non-fungible tokens have, over recent months, increasingly found their way into major museums. Earlier this year, Refik Anadol, one of the 13 creators whose work will be featured at the launch of Sotheby’s new marketplace, exhibited his “Unsupervised” collection in the famous Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
Recent months also saw several important moves toward preserving non-fungible tokens as significant cultural artifacts. Since November 2022, Yuga and Larva Labs have been driving the “Punks Legacy Project” and have already donated some noteworthy NFTs to Paris’ Centre Pompidou. More recently, an influencer known on Twitter as Cozomo de Medici donated a 22-piece collection to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)