Vigee.art is a non-profit digital art ecosystem where digital artwork like drawings, paintings, music and books and their immutably transferable proof of ownership can be exhibited, auctioned and sold with built-in solidarity giving back to the artist community. The platform allows an artist to publish and tokenize their artwork with low transaction fees unlike on currently available marketplaces focusing solely on profits versus community building, solidarity and long-term vision. Transaction fees are automatically adapted based on the contribution to a solidarity fund. Vigee’s “Community” vote on a quarterly basis for artists or projects to which funds will be donated. Furthermore, artists also benefit of royalty fees whenever their artwork is being traded on further, obtaining royalties accordingly.
Background
Vigee.art Features and Benefits
- Access to a Solidarity driven Marketplace & Community
- Peer to Peer transactions of ownership rights
- Preservation of verified ownership rights
- Creating Artist obtains royalty fees on each transfer
- Solidarity contribution Incentive reducing platform fees
- Proposal & Voting of Projects obtaining Community Funds
- Simple low-cost tokenization
The Digital Art Revolution
It has been very difficult to ignore the press coverage about digital artwork being traded in form of NFT’s on various marketplaces. The media highlights that some artwork was sold by artists via famous auctioneers and marketplaces for exorbitant amounts of money. This in return caught the eye of many artists and art aficionados wanting to exhibit and trade many types of digital artwork. Collectors are buying and trading such artwork with a major focus on making profits which is also the case for the actual marketplace platforms. There is sadly no real interest and focus in giving back to the global artist community like donating a share of profits, which could provide support to some great projects or individuals.
Why Now
Young talents have been showing lots of interest in NFT marketplaces wanting to publish their artwork, as there are currently not many options with lockdowns, restrictions in place limiting access to galleries, trading places. One could say that many young artists have missed a chance or at least lost a few opportunities to shine, since the start of the pandemic and restrictions
Publishing artwork on digital art marketplaces bares also some caveats, which can have a financial impact on an artist wanting to publish artwork. Some platforms charge high publishing fees besides exponential gas fees which arise due to the underlying Ethereum blockchain framework
Gas fees have substantially risen due to high traffic on the Ethereum network mainly due to the fast-growing DeFi space and most NFT marketplaces being based on it. Thus, it could be said that it has become very costly for young artists wanting to publish their artwork. To publish artwork will cost on average between 50-100 USD per item to be published. This is very high considering that the piece has not even been sold, which leads to artists having to make some substantial upfront investments without a guarantee that it will ever be sold.
As aforementioned, current marketplaces don’t focus on building communities and giving back to them from a solidarity and support perspective. There are many great artists and projects out there which could be supported through initiatives by the latest trending platform and blockchain technology providers. The objective should also be wanting to make a change and not just focus on short-term profits!