Auction house Sotheby’s will leverage a technology that cryptographically links a physical piece of art to a digital version. The technology will first be used with a Picasso painting to be auctioned on June 29.
It is not new to tie a non-fungible token (NFT) to a physical asset. Numerous use cases that track physical items leverage NFTs without using the term. For example, projects that verify the authenticity of luxury items from LVMH use NFTs. Nike filed a patent for blockchain-based sneakers called CyptoKicks that would enable a digital asset to be tied to each pair of shoes. And in the art world, APENFT, launched by TRON blockchain founder Justin Sun, is selling an NFT based on an Andy Warhol piece of art it owns.
As NFTs have become more mainstream, the average person associates them with collectibles which tend to be purely linked to digital items such as video moments, digital art or music. Sotheby’s initiative differs from these NFTs because the digital assets are not independent. The content is a token that is tightly linked to a physical item, often referred to as a digital twin enabling the physical item to be digitally tracked.
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