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An estimated 4.3 billion people use the internet on a regular basis which equates to approximately 55% of the world's population is online. This statistic is growing rapidly with a user growth rate of 9% from January 2018 to January 2019.
Most of the art people see today is digital. Art entering the virtual world through social media, like Facebook or Instagram, was an incredible leap for many artists. Artists suddenly had the means to showcase their creations to people all over the world and reach new customers. Before the internet, artists gained limited audiences by connecting with gallery owners or submitting their artwork to magazines. Although these efforts weren’t necessarily difficult, it did create a barrier for many artists. Today, anyone can create a painting and post it online for the world to enjoy. If they are lucky, someone on the other side of the world may offer to purchase it. These types of opportunities were impossible before the internet.

02.01 Creating Digital Art

People that consider digital art superior to physical are definitely in the minority, but the potential of digital art is so incredible that it will likely become the majority preference within the next decade. Not only does digital art allow for widespread distribution, but art experiences themselves will transform. Imagine an art gallery where viewers can wear VR headsets to shrink and enter the artwork, enjoy a scene played in front of them like a movie, or perhaps explore artworks with a video game experience attached.

Digital art is lowering the entry barrier to the art world. Of course, anyone can pick up a paintbrush, but it doesn't mean an art gallery will sell your art. Even if the gallery does attempt to sell your art, they generally take a 50% commission. With digital art, one only needs a computer connected to the internet to create, advertise, and sell artwork with little to no barriers. An artist can create a piece with design software like Photoshop, advertise on social media, and then sell the piece online.

The ease at which this can be done opens the door to artists all over the world to create and experiment. Unfortunately, digital art has one major drawback: most digital items can be easily copied since most software is replicable and does not allow for unique digital objects. If artists want to create truly unique digital pieces, they will need to put their work on a blockchain.

02.02 Benefits of Art on a Blockchain

Blockchain, or distributed ledger technology, enables digital things to be scarce. A regular digital item can be copied and replicated unlimited times at no cost, but a digital item on a blockchain cannot. Blockchains are essentially a network of computers that ensure no duplicate or fraudulent records are created. If they are, the system will not recognize them. Blockchains have numerous other benefits for art, such as;

• Supply
• The artist can add code into their digital work to indicate the number of copies that will be created. They can choose to make their art “1 of 1”, “1 of 100”, open for unlimited copies, or whatever. As a purchaser of digital art, you can inspect the code and see what the artist has allowed.
• Ownership
• Blockchains allow users to truly own their digital assets. For regular digital items, the creator or developer has the power to delete it at any time.
• Authentication
• Knowing the authenticity of artwork is extremely important and can massively impact a work’s value. A blockchain records the time and date of an asset’s creation and when it’s traded. It’s nearly impossible to determine these details with traditional physical artwork.
• Native Commerce Integration.

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