My first Street Art NFTs
First Street Art mural tokenized as NFTs
[August 25, 2019] I'm happy to have found a way to give a second life to my ephemeral Street Art murals by "tokenizing" them as NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. Which turns them into unique, long-lasting Digital Collectibles. I have spent many years experimenting with different ways to make my work viable and independent, to stay as creative as possible by avoiding art dealers and institutions. One of the solutions that I had two years ago was to monetize my Street Art frescoes using the new possibilities offered by cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
Using QR codes affixed to my frescoes since 2017, I was able to receive more than 1.21 bitcoin (more than $ 10,000) in two years. The support of multiple donors all around the world encouraged me to continue in this direction.
In January 2019, I organized a $ 1000 treasure hunt in bitcoin (0.279 btc) contained in an enigma hidden in a mural: "Liberty Leading the People 2019". The riddle has been solved by a couple in a week (see solution).
It's been a long time since I heard about Crypto Digital Collectibles called NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens, created from the Ethereum standard ERC721). These NFTs allow to introduce scarcity in the digital world, which gives a real value to digital objects ... But I had a problem: I did not see how to combine a "physical" artwork with a Digital NFT, since this can be problematic if one takes more value than the other, nothing connects them concretely in a long term vision... In addition to this complication is added another issue: my murals are often erased after a few weeks. See worse: censored. Like "Liberty Leading the People 2019" which was erased after 3 weeks at the request of the Paris Police Prefecture and the Mayor of the 19th arrondissement.
We had to find a way to make my murals immutable by giving them a concrete long term value with NFTs, then the problem of combining the "physical object" and the "digital object" is solved because the Street Art mural has a limited lifetime, so that the digital NFT is imperishable. It also allows all those who support my work (collectors, patrons ...) to be able to collect my murals even if they no longer exist physically and to give them a second life.
I created a few days ago my first two NFTs, which together form a complete fresco named "Daddy, what's money?". This is a world premiere, because it is the first "real" and ephemeral work to be tokenized as NFTs ... Moreover, this work has a symbolic value because it is the first mural I did that has a Bitcoin QR code to receive donations.
The original fresco was made in November 2017 in the 19th district of Paris, at the crossroads of rue Riquet and rue d'Aubervilliers. At the time of writing this article (August 25, 2019), it is still visible, even if the QR code on the right has been erased.
To acquire these Digital Collectibles on OpenSea, you need a web browser (Firefox, Chrome) that supports the MetaMask extension and you can get Ethereum directly via MetaMask or on an online cryptocurrency exchange. like Coinbase, Coinhouse, ...
Link to the NFT collection.