This Artwork Is Always On Sale v2
On 21 March 2019, I released the first NFT collectible that was always-on-sale using “Harberger Tax”. In order to keep the collectible, you pay a tax based on a price that you have to specify. This price must always be set. It is called: “This Artwork Is Always On Sale”.
As artist, I’ve received ~18.4 ETH since then as patronage. It turned over 3 times, before being held by the same patron since then. It is valued at 240 ETH (currently). In it, I asked a few question as it relates to this being conceptual art experiment. I spoke on it during a meetup at Para Site art gallery in Hong Kong. It was an interesting crowd: mixing Ethereum & the art world. It helps that Jehan Chu moderated: going from an art curator to an investor.
I want to try answer these questions I had when I launched it:
Does this digital art property rights system change the relationship between collector/patron and artist?
I think it does. But: currently, I would say, it’s more weighted as a novel patronage system, rather a novel collectible system. Instead of others forms of funding, this is a way for a patron to support a creative. I managed to get in touch with the owner of the V1 artwork that held it for a year and that’s what they said: for them this was a way to give back to me, as someone who has contributed to the open source ecosystem in Ethereum.
Does allowing for a more readily available avenue for patronage create more revenue for an artist?
I think one would have to compare what would’ve happened if I sold this artwork on platform like SuperRare. In the past year, the SuperRare team has done an amazing job at building out this industry. Their artists have earned almost $1 million. And some of that is in the form of artists earning from secondary sales: a different form of continuous patronage. I think in my case, it’s more an avenue for patronage, rather than my capability to be an artist. So, this question is still to be answered.
Does this property rights system allow for more sustainable funding of creative works?
In my case, having like clockwork, earning about 1.1 ETH a month from this project, was helpful. It does help knowing that at least in some sense, there’s some cashflow happening: by the second. As opposed to other revenue events. So, if ‘sustainable funding’, means having more consistent revenue, I would say, yes.
Does an always-on auction and market for arts and subsequent speculation/pricing change the relationship towards the art and the artist?
I would say so. The consistent financialization of the art will inevitably change a relationship. But. It doesn’t mean it’s less meaningful. We’ve seen this in the case of subscription creators, booming over the past few years. Patreon, Substack, OnlyFans, etc.
Does the increased turnover of the digital art and subsequent possibility of ownership by more people increase the value of the art (financially and artistically)?
I don’t think I can test this yet. I need to perhaps launch v3 with say a 50% patronage, at a lower rate to see how they compare. It’s still hard to do this in a vacuum, however. I think v2 is going to help answer this question. It being turned over more often might increase general interest in the project and idea.
Does always-on-sale art help us understand how much of our current life is already always on sale without us knowing it?
I would say no. I think I need to be more explicit about this, in general. My thinking here is that it refers to things like data being sold.
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Since V1: Wildcards picked up the torch and continued deploying many Harberger taxed collectibles for the purpose of patronage and conservation of endangered animals.
The team has done a great work to continue building a more scalable platform for deploying Harberger collectibles on Ethereum. Also. They are just rad folk in general. During this time, Jason Smythe, found a few medium-severity bugs in the code I wrote. If one isn’t careful, a malicious attacker, could profitably steal funds when doing certain actions.
I took this opportunity to get back into coding, and playing with new frameworks and tools in the Ethereum space. I forked Austin Griffith’s useful scaffold-eth and recoded the app from scratch. I got to play with new frameworks such as Buidler, OpenZeppelin-SDK, Waffle, Ethers.js, & Blocknative. Pretty great to see more and more tools being developed in this space!
With the bugs fixed, I decided to deploy a v2 of the artwork and keep v1 going (ensuring that buyers know the pre-cautionary steps they need to take to stay safe).
There is one big change however: a 100% patronage rate per annum vs the old, 5% patronage rate per annum.
This time: with unapologetically more ~~:: W A V E ::~~
In general, the patronage rate in this context has one effect: it generally will lower the price of the artwork, and thus, one would expect that it would be bought more frequently. A way to frame the patronage rate, is to think of the likelihood that it would turn over in a year. Thus: with 5% patronage rate, it’s expected that there would be a 5% chance that it would be sold during a year.
The Wildcards team have experiment with different rates, but the data still needs to be crunched to determine what the optimal rate would be for patronage. It depends on many factors. In some instances, even when a Harberger collectible is used purely for patronage, I don’t think one specific rate would amount to an optimal rate.
I explored these questions in a previous blog post.
Thus: for v2, I wanted to see what happens if the artwork turns over more frequently and thus pushed the rate to a 100%. This effectively means that whatever price you choose, that’s the amount you would pay to hold it: for a year. It might end up being too much of a depreciating effect on the price, and cause it to be less valuable as a collectible, as a whole. Or: it might be more valuable.
I think: generally, this model works as a form of patronage, and the speculative aspect of it, is a core feature that allows one to create patronage as an asset class. It is both a form of patronage, and a collectible.
I’m curious to see what the outcome will be. There’s currently an owner, pricing it at 3 ETH.
https://thisartworkisalwaysonsale.com/
Let’s continue experimenting!
