The 256-year-old institution has launched Christie’s 3.0, a new platform based on Diana Sinclair’s exclusive collection.
In short,
- Christie's auction house has launched a new on-chain Ethereum NFT market called Christie's 3.0.
- The auction house has previously held a famous NFT auction, including a $69.3 million Beeple art auction.
Christie's has shined in the NFT field, most notably the auction of Beeple's "Everydays: The First 5,000 Days" artwork for $69.3 million in March 2021. The famous auction house has now fully embraced the decentralized spirit of Web3 and launched a new market for auction on the public Ethereum blockchain.
The Christie’s 3.0 market launched today is to record transactions in full on the Ethereum blockchain. The 256-year-old auction house said it will also provide tools for compliance and taxation.
The new Christie's platform was created in partnership with Manifold, a startup focused on smart contracts, that is, the code that powers NFT and other decentralized applications. Christie's is also working with blockchain analytics company Chainalysis and metacosmic platform Spatial to provide more features to its market.
Although some previous Christie's NFT auctions took the headlines, actual transactions are usually not done on-chain - a process that provides transparency about the wallet and payment streams involved. Christie’s 3.0 reshaped this approach, and on-chain transactions are more similar to those in markets such as OpenSea and Rarible.
Nicole Sales Giles, director of digital art sales at Christie’s, commented in a press release that the new market will “provide the public the opportunity to collect special NFTs on the chain in the way they should be trading.”
However, Christie's will continue to emphasize planning rather than allowing anyone to list their artwork or collections. For the launch of the market, Christie’s offers only one exclusive project: a collection of 9 NFTs by multidisciplinary artist Diana Sinclair.
Sotheby's is Christie's' main competitor in the high-end auction field and is also deeply rooted in the NFT field: the auction house launched the Sotheby's Metaverse NFT market in October last year and held its own high-profile real-world NFT auction.
