Art is known for its potential to disrupt, for being radical and innovative. The same can be said for blockchain, so it’s only natural that the two join forces.
Currently, the online art marketplace oversees the exchange of billions of dollars, predicted to reach $9.58 billion by 2020. Such a robust industry is bound to have problems with opportunists and unethical art dealers – chiefly, counterfeiting and artificial price manipulation – making it hard to verify the legitimacy and value of artwork. Both of these have been issues ever since art first became marketable, and up until now no one has come up with a surefire solution.
All Public Art is a project that is looking to combat these issues by establishing a form of social trust, reducing the sale of counterfeit artwork through the use of blockchain technology. By using the blockchain, an immutable public ledger, All Public Art is able to establish a global peer-to-peer marketplace that is resistant to the sale of counterfeit artwork.
In addition to its use of blockchain technology to prevent counterfeiting and price gouging, the All Public Art project maintains its vision of providing a robust platform to allow artists and collectors to interact with each other on a peer-to-peer basis, completely removing third-party intervention. Not only does this remove the necessity of trusting a middleman, but it allows members of the community to become more closely involved with each other in a social marketplace environment.
What Does All Public Art Do?
All Public Art is a peer-to-peer platform that allows artists (sellers) and collectors (buyers) to interact directly in a safe environment free of counterfeit artwork and price manipulation. By utilizing blockchain technology as the foundation of its platform, it intends to provide security, transparency, and empowerment to artists and art aficionados – and it has come a long way in beta form since 2015, gaining a prominent foothold in the online art market thanks to an active and passionate community.
As their whitepaper states:
“All Public Art (APA) impacts the art market with a robust, peer-to-peer trading platform utilizing blockchain technology to eliminate counterfeiting, and intermediary price manipulation which has significantly plagued the industry for decades.”
Here is a well-explained introductory video that explain the fundamentals of All Public Art:
The blockchain technology that APA is using to power their platform will deploy smart contracts to ensure the peer-to-peer interactions between buyer and seller are done so in a trustless manner, without third-party intervention. The APA tokens will serve as a means of transaction between marketplace buyers and sellers, while storing the transaction data on an immutable ledger that is public to everyone. Using blockchain technology provides several benefits to a platform such as All Public Art, as it guarantees integrity of the transaction, removes the necessity of a middleman to handle the sale/purchase of art, and provides a social environment for its community.
For further insight into the All Public Art project, here is a video that covers an interview with CEO of All Public Art, Graham Goddard:
Key Features of APA
Communication
APA provides many features that boost the utility of its platform to create a safe marketplace environment for consumers. One of the features that APA takes pride in is establishing a trustless system in which the middleman (in this case, the art gallery or dealer) is removed from the equation of a transaction between client and seller. This simple and effective communication is achieved through executing smart contracts on the blockchain, so that artists and art collectors can handle trade deals directly with each other. This also allows buyers and sellers in the art community to build close working relationships, based on a factor of trust, because using the smart contract ensures that neither party can scam the other.
Transparency
Something that makes blockchain technology so unique is its capacity for transparency. While All Public Art ensures that the identities of both buyer and seller are hidden from the public, the metadata of the transaction, such as cost, time of transaction, etc., will all be publicly visible on the ledger. The All Public Art platform is able to guarantee that the integrity of each transaction is met at high standards. By ensuring that the marketplace is transparent and freely accessible, individuals interested in becoming active in the marketplace can be confident that their transaction history and data will not be maliciously manipulated or altered.
Security
The security system proposed by All Public Art is very interesting. Artists and collectors will be assigned unique identifiers that remain separate from their personal identities. These identifiers allow for pseudonymity in the system, as both collectors and artists will be known in the marketplace by a string of characters. This lets all marketplace traders remain anonymous within the community, allowing potential collectors to view the history of different art pieces for sale without it being traced back to them.
Empowering Art Enthusiasts
By removing the middleman in a transaction between collector and artist, each party is ensured a fair and reliable transaction, free of commission fees. By moving one step forward to putting the power back into the artists’ hands, art enthusiasts will know that all decisions are being driven by the artists themselves. Using an outsourced entity, such as an art gallery or auctioneer, puts limitations on the artists on how the transaction should be initiated, while driving prices up. This also creates a distance between artist and collector, which limits social interaction, putting a halt on the artist’s ability to establish a working business relationship with the client directly. Blockchain technology is a big step in the direction of putting power back in the artists’ hands, and All Public Art is spearheading this shift in the art community.
A Supportive Community
In addition to being able to purchase artwork directly from artists, collectors will also be able to use the APA token as a means of donating to their favorite artists. This provides collectors the opportunity to support individual artists whose work they admire, again reinforcing strong relationships and conversation within the art community. The APA token can be traded in the marketplace without restrictions, allowing artists to purchase art supplies and other professional materials to create more art. Essentially, this is a more egalitarian take on Renaissance-era art patronage, facilitated for modern times by the blockchain.
All Public Art Roadmap
The All Public Art project will exist in two phases: Adding APA Tokens & Blockchain to All Public Art and Increasing Market Share.
During the first phase of the roadmap, the All Public Art team will integrate the APA tokens into their platform, which is powered on blockchain technology. The All Public Art website and mobile applications are currently in the open beta stage and in use by the APA community. The way the platform is designed focuses on creating social relationships between artists and art collectors.
Upon the completion of the ICO, which begins on February 19 (although their token pre-sale starts on February 12), the All Public Art project will begin to integrate and implement the blockchain technology functionality to provide smart contract benefits to their community. Once the blockchain functionality is completely integrated, the APA tokens will be the only form of payment to exist on the platform.
Near the end of the first phase, the artist will be able to sell a piece of art at a set price that they decide, and if an art collector agrees to the price they will be able to use their APA tokens to make the purchase through the use of smart contracts. Once the smart contract is executed, the artist will be paid and the collector will receive their piece of art.
In the second phase of the roadmap, the All Public Art team aims to increase their market share in the crypto space. After the platform is up and running and successfully executing smart contracts on top of the blockchain technology, the team aims to branch out and establish new partnerships within the art industry. The team’s goals are to make the platform robust and easy to use while ensuring that the utility of the APA token remains an important factor within their platform.
All Public Art ICO
The All Public Art ICO will create a maximum of 800 million APA tokens, where no more than half of the amount sold during the token sale (400 million APA tokens) will be available for purchase during the time of the ICO. The ICO target is $30 million and the only payment method accepted is ETH (Ethereum).
The APA token is an ERC-20 based token which is powered on the Ethereum network.
Further details regarding the ICO:
- Each APA token will cost $0.075.
- ETH received will be held until the last day of the token sale. The USD value of the ETH at that time will be used to determine the number of tokens to be received by the purchaser.
- Participants that join the presale will receive bonus tokens as an incentive for joining early.
The following chart shows the details of the token presale:
The following chart shows the details of the token crowdsale:
The APA token presale will start on February 12, 2018 and will segue into the public token crowdsale on February 19, 2018. The token crowdsale ends on March 19, 2018. The crowdsale may finish earlier if the cap of $30 million is accomplished before the deadline. The minimum contribution during the presale is $10,500 worth of ETH. If you are a registered artist, however, the minimum contribution during the presale is $15 worth of ETH.
Conclusion
The art industry is a booming market that still faces many issues relating to price manipulation and counterfeiting. The All Public Art platform is designed to thwart these issues by utilizing blockchain technology and developing a platform enabling artists and collectors to transact with one another. By making transactions as secure and direct as possible, it allows the art community to focus more of their attention the art itself.
The All Public Art platform has a long-term vision of establishing a safe, close-knit community built on friendly social interactions and healthy business relationships between artists and collectors. Moreover, this platform seeks to be inclusive of anyone with a passion for the arts, be they supporters, hopeful artists themselves looking for guidance or ideas, or just regular people who appreciate art and those who create it. This community will hopefully grow to become an inclusive and inspirational space, with the APA token being used as a currency both to purchase artwork and tip artists to support their efforts in the community.
The All Public Art ICO is going to spark a change in the art industry on a global scale by developing a peer-to-peer platform that remains secure and reliable, prioritizing integrity for all those involved in the community and ultimately the project.
You can learn more about the token pre-sale/ICO on their website. You can also learn more about the goals and visions of the All Public Art project by reading their whitepaper.
