The Blockchain Certificate

The purchasers who live overseas often ask me “does the artwork come with a certificate of authenticity?” Actually, I hadn’t issued it before. I think the autograph proves it’s authentic, however, the certificate will be very important in regard to a secondary distribution in the future. Either way, there will be more opportunities that I will be asked for the certificate of authenticity.

The certificate usually says “this is an authentic artwork by Jun Oson” with an autograph on a paper, but I came to think that the paper-based certificate is no longer needed nowadays.

By the way, my new studio was completed last month and Mr. F, who took care of it, told me an interesting thing. His friend has established a company that deals with a digital certificate which has drawn attention. It’s called Startbahn. It offers a blockchain certificate called Cert.

I found it good. So I’ve decided to introduce it after I asked some questions there.

I assume that the blockchain certificate sounds complicated to a lot of people, (and I even thought so), however, to make it simplified, it means that you register yourself as the owner of the artwork on Startbahn Cert. It requires a very simple procedure.

I am the owner of the artwork as an author at the moment. Then you buy my artwork and create an account on Startbahn Cert. You tell me your email address, ( it can be coded if you prefer), and I move the ownership to the purchaser. That’s all.

Cert. can take cash, credit card and other payment methods. It records when and how we deal with it. I don’t want the purchaser to pay only by virtual currency. It requires too much work.

Also, Cert. introduces a new system which is beneficial to artists. When the artwork is bought or sold, the artist will earn money at the rate that you have decided. It has always been questionable that artists aren’t rewarded when their works are sold at a high price at an auction.

If your work is sold at 5,000,000 yen at an auction which was sold at 500,000 yen at an exhibition, you will have nothing. Of course, you will get a good reputation as an artist whose work is highly valuable, however, it never sounds right that the person who bought and sold your work gets a lot of money.

In my case, I set my rate at 5%. For example, if someone bought my work at 300,000 yen and sold it at 1,000,000 yen, 50,000 yen would be paid to my bank account. Also the artist can change the rate as they want. I wish this system will be spread and artists will benefit from secondary and tertiary distributions.

That’s why I’ve decided to use the blockchain certification on Cert. from now on. I understand that it requires a registration and a payment to an artist for art collectors, but there are some advantages too. For example, you can look up a history using an IC tag easily, get a blockchain certificate which is a strong system, and so on. I would appreciate your understanding. 

Thank you.