Artwork
The global artwork industry was valued at over $72 billion in 2021, but surprisingly, only about 10% of artists and art school graduates make a living working in the arts industry, which implies that the majority of them aren’t making money from their arts.
As if that wasn't bad enough, artists who make money working in the art industry usually make less than 5% of the profit their art makes because they only get to keep a part of the initial sale and get nothing from the secondary sales which makes up a chunk of the money an artwork makes. What this goes to show is that artists and creatives usually make less than 2% of the total global art sales.
So, if artists and art school graduates don’t make money from arts, who then makes all the money? The gatekeepers and middlemen aka “agents & dealers,” are the people making most of the money in the art industry. They control access to who can purchase art from artists and how artists can sell their artwork, which makes it difficult for the average art enthusiast to buy and own artwork of their favorite upcoming artists.
However, the emergence of NFTs is bringing about an artistic revolution that changes this. It grants artists the authority to sell, rent, or display their artwork as they see fit, shifting the power from dealers to artists and weakening the hold of collectors and dealers over the art industry.
NFTs are eliminating the middlemen who often try to extract a sizable portion of the proceeds from the sale of an artwork, thereby increasing the profit artists make.
What are NFT Artworks?
NFTs stand for non-fungible tokens, which are a class of digital assets that exists in the digital universe of Web3. In the simplest of terms, NFT artwork is a digital token tied to an artwork that can easily be traded, verified, and has no tangible existence in the real world.
To get a better picture of how NFTs work, we need to understand what fungibility means. The term "fungibility" describes the ability of an asset to be traded for or replaced with a similar asset of the same value. For example, currencies are fungible assets. You can exchange a $1 bill for another and it would still have the same value. But unlike fungible assets, non-fungible assets cannot be exchanged for another asset of the same value. Each one is unique and cannot be replaced with something similar.
NFTs are important in the art world because they function as digital certificates of ownership or provenance and can’t be faked or tampered with because ownership of an asset is recorded on the immutable technology of the blockchain. Even if someone copies an NFT artwork, it doesn’t matter because only the buyer of the NFT owns the artwork.
So, therefore, artwork NFTs are unique cryptocurrencies. They exist as smart contracts that are stored on a blockchain ledger and store ownership information about an artwork, such as who owns it, who sold it, and when it was sold.
How NFTs are Transforming the Art Industry
NFTs are here to stay. They’ve created a legitimate way for artists and creatives to access the complex world of selling artworks. It is bringing about an artistic revolution and changing how artists can sell their artwork.
Over the last few years, NFTs have transformed the art world. It has provided artists with the means to sell their artwork without the interference of gatekeepers. Just like how social media gave us the ability to connect with anyone around the globe, NFTs provide artists the platform to easily access global audiences.
NFTs are the closest thing to a commercial revolution in the art world. Due to the decentralized and unique nature of NFTs and the blockchain, it is now easy for artwork to be produced and acquired digitally. This opens up a tidal wave of opportunity for creatives to get into the art space.
Art NFTs give investors more incentives to support new and upcoming artists and reap the benefit when the artist becomes famous. With how valuable NFTs will become in the near future, investors who get in now have the potential to greatly increase their investments when NFTs become mainstream.
How to Get Started with Artwork NFTs Using Xircus
Now that we know why it’s essential for artists and artwork creators to get into the artwork NFT space, let’s talk about the process of converting a digital piece of artwork into an NFT that someone else would buy?
Usually, artists who want to start selling their work as NFTs would pay anywhere from $30 to $200 to mint their work on a marketplace that runs on the Ethereum blockchain. This cost, known as Ethereum gas fees, is a major barrier to entry for many artists who don’t have much cash lying around. That's why we’ve created a protocol that makes it easy for artists and creative creators to create a tokenized version of their artwork free of charge, with no hidden charges.
At Xircus, we are committed to creating a protocol that would enable artists to make a living from the art they make. We want to provide artists and collectors with the tools needed to get a piece of the global art market.
We’ve built a protocol that provides artists and art school graduates with everything they need to get started in the art NFT space. We give artists a platform to create their own NFT store, mint their NFTs, put them up for sale, do giveaways, gamified access, incentives, marketing, and auction in minutes.