A New Patronage Class in the Digital Art World, Francesco Fontana

sure how familiar you are with that process but I can tell you that in the currently in the web 3 space uh pretty much like the traditional space uh it is quite tough to to sort of uh Kindle this this relationship uh at first which is that you you just have you know an open world Dynamic uh you just have you know artists from all over and you can have to you know match them with collectors um when whenever you have this you know usually platforms come into the picture to sort of streamline this process uh but it's you know you you either have to add a curation element uh or you have to sort of have it open uh have you know open additions and and sort of have artists come in and uh and the things kind of sort itself out so uh what we've thought is to add a bit of a curation element uh but then sort of work on the back end to sort of stimulate uh traffic to uh particular projects and have them funded so this is a bit about me but you know slides are taking a bit to uh to to load but about me I you know have uh some experience in the traditional art world uh did my four-year degree in uh in New York studying the Art Market and alternative markets in general after that I've you know worked for a few Platforms in the space artad which is quite active uh both in in Milan and London sort of uh trying to onboard traditional art collectors into the digital art space after that I've uh I've been involved uh actually in an art blocks created release you might be familiar with with art blocks uh pretty B big platform in the space uh was part of a 300 eth um sale that happened uh in May 2023 which you might remember was actually a uh a bare uh period uh so since then I've been you know working on this and a few other endeavors um the goal that we set out to to accomplish here is to bring patronage uh to the digital art space uh so so patronage you know has a varied history uh well in the history of of Art in general you know the the to put it shortly uh patient just you know collectors supporting artists long term right uh what we seen in in in recent times is that uh as sort of the art objects in itself uh has gain you know significant value we've we've seen this slowly develop ever since the the Renaissance what we've seen is uh collectors uh supporting artist uh via commissions so uh a singular collector will just uh um ask an artist to create works for them singular Works uh other types of uh support to artists is is usually in the form of residencies so you know a collector will host an artist in a particular place for an extended period of time in which in which period of time the artist sort of produces artworks that later are either uh sold at U the original collector at a discounted price sometimes they're given out for free and there's you know this sort of um this sort of long-term relationship that uh kind of develops over time uh in this report with the uh with the collector in the digital art space this um has been kind of a troubled uh relationship for quite some time that's because uh what we've seen uh lead in the space first of all was you know very cheap art uh and what that meant is that collectors were not really tempted to sort of develop this longer term relationship with uh with with artists uh so what happened was that at some point you know collectors after you know the boom and bust uh collectors started slowly developing a taste uh for digital artists and so slowly we've been seeing some form of you know relationships form between collectors and artists the big hurdle is still that um you know first first off there's plenty of artists cuz you know there's less of a barrier to entry in the space um and so this means that collectors are also you know again left in this open world of uh of possibilities as it comes to artists it's it's quite tough to develop a taste in general in the space um also you have artists who are not really tempted to kind of you know build this relationship they always try to chase uh new clients uh and they don't have the usual protection that you know usually a gallery uh gives you uh so you know they might they might go for institutional commissions um but usually we've not really seen this type of of thing unfold and if it does it's actually it you know kind of develops in a sort of actually you know kind of a demeaning way uh which is that you know colle collectors will just you know uh say to artists you know well we'll just pay you you know either a lump sum for work uh and so you know there's not that much ground to actually develop a a stronger relationship so we've set out to you know solve this issue in a particular manner um which is that we kind of create this structure that you know you usually get either via galleries or with traditional collectors sort of um building this uh artist Patron relationship over time uh so what we do is we kind of take uh take on a singular project by the artist so we're not a gallery we don't just you know take a percentage uh from from all works and kind of you know have uh have the artists you know sign this lifetime contract so that what we do is that we just um help them out with a particular NFD collection um and and in turn the patron um you know gives gives out a lump sum of money at first and is then involved in the process so a component of this is you know front row seats to the artistic production process you know what what happens is we try to include the collector in the production process in a way uh that has been actually gradually lost even in the uh Mega Gallery space you know collectors are not really tempted to form this relationship with the artists because they just want to invest in artists who are represented by Blue Chip galleries uh so you kind of have this you know C sort of vicious cycle where new artists cannot really come out uh and you never really have this type of the you know longer relationship unfold but what I think is most relevant to I mean this this type of conference this is a technical conference is the actual sales structure so as mentioned before what we do is um we have you know you know an initial Patron who uh pitches in money and and what we do is we have this money cover the production costs uh so so in a way you know you have the collectors sort of you know investing early on in an artist so they're not investing in the singular work because this is going to be an NFD collection we've built this specifically for you know generative uh art collection so we're talking you know maybe 100 200 400 discrete pieces uh um so what this does is that first off it gives artists money to produce The Works uh which unfortunately in the digital art space is not too common it is common in the traditional art space but that's that the that's at the expense of the artist really uh being able to invest in their you know name and brand long term uh without signing a very disadvantageous contract with mega galleries so what we do is again you know we this kind of trade at first a patron sort of investing in um in in an artist collection uh that's to cover the production cost after that what we do is we sell off well the Patron in turn gets a uh a few pieces from the final collection uh we don't see a percentage to avoid sort of uh confusing the the whole deal even more so say you know it's like a a 400 discret pieces being sold in the entire collection we just you know give out you know say 40 or 80 pieces from that set collection uh to the original Patron the following pieces are sold off then in a Dutch auction you might be familiar with the Dutch auction system it's quite typical uh in the nft space um but I can get into it we use a particular form of this which is VR gdas so a duck auction again pretty simple is you know an auction where you start at you know a high price and progressively it goes down until all works all sold right uh so then there's gradual D auctions which is that you you add a time component that is you know stretch over time so you could have you know a monthlong uh dut auction where there's also some further you know custom Dynamics happening uh during the auction so maybe you know based on how works are sold over a period of time the the the price can fluctuate in a way that is not just you know a curve uh so what we use is VR gdas uh it's there's a paper B Paradigm uh developed on this um which is variable rate gradual BL shs right so uh compared to so gdas are just you know uh the price can fluctuate but it's still based on an algorithm what we do is uh these are actual uh sort of manually put in you know custom prices over time so we kind of project uh what the interest is going to be in the collection long term and we kind of adapt for it right so price is going to fluctuate over time we know that based on you know as the artist is working on the on the collection funded by the original Patron over time uh we are going to you know kind of uh fuel interest in the collection as a whole H and that is going to have the price fluctuate you know so so compared So based on when we're going to announce specific features of the art collection then um we have the price reflect for that right uh so in a way it's kind of you know using um automated market makers but make it custom but also the focuses is not really gas uh amortization is to actually fuel interest and sort of have uh the upper hand when it comes to pricing right uh and of course based on how high up the uh the price goes we kind of uh take on that the money as we factor in Risk uh the artist is guaranteed to have a specific sum of money we're pretty transparent on uh how much they get um that's of course based on how many works are actually sold hopefully it sells out and then of course there's the promotion and curation element of course we take on on that um as would a traditional Gallery again I mean this is not too pertinent uh to what we're talking about here so I'll uh I'll leave it open but again I'm open to questions and yeah so there's that [Applause]