Gemini · CryptoSlate
The NFT party is over and everybody now owes storage rent
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In 2021, Christie's sold a Beeple NFT for $69.35 million, and Sotheby's took another $24.40 million for 101 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, giving cartoon primates the kind of auction-house treatment usually reserved for Fabergé eggs.
Key facts
- In 2021, Christie's sold a Beeple NFT for $69.35 million, and Sotheby's took another $24.40 million for 101 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, giving cartoon primates the kind of auction-house treatment
- In MoMA's 2016 account of restoring Teiji Furuhashi's Lovers, conservator Ben Fino-Radin described a project involving obsolete technology, including MS-DOS and LaserDiscs
- In a December 2021 discussion published by LACMA, digital preservation manager Joey Heinen and computer scientist Elian Carsenat examined the software, storage, and continuing responsibility involved
- Many Ethereum NFTs use the ERC-721 standard that records who owns each token and allows it to be transferred
Summary
01 Nifty Gateway’s closure shows that owning an NFT does not necessarily mean owning or controlling the files behind it. 02 NFT artwork can depend on servers, gateways, and storage providers long after the original marketplace disappears. 03 Long-term digital ownership ultimately depends on someone accepting the cost and responsibility of keeping the work alive. But now, not five years later, one of the marketplaces that helped sell the digital art revolution is explaining how customers could take their belongings with them when it closed.