Luxury auction house Sotheby's has announced the addition of a new on-chain marketplace that will allow digital art collectors to purchase secondary NFTs.
While many pre-existing NFT marketplaces already host peer-to-peer sales of digital artwork, the auction house is trying to differentiate itself by offering “a rotating selection of leading artists handpicked by Sotheby's experts. All NFT sales on the Sotheby's Metaverse platforms are conducted via smart contracts, allowing digital art collectors to choose Ethereum to pay for their art and collectibles.
Sotheby's also noted that it will honor the artist's royalties through smart contracts on the secondary sales platform, which will be automatically paid to the artist based on the royalty rate chosen by the artist. According to Sotheby's announcement on Twitter on May 1, the platform will feature works by 13 prominent digital artists, including pseudonymous artists XCOPY, Claire Silver, Taylor Hobbs and Hakatao.
The 279-year-old Anglo-American clearinghouse first appeared in the NFT space in April 2021 when it auctioned off the work of a pseudonymous digital artist named Pak. Since then, the art house has had several record-breaking digital art sales. June 11, 2021, Sotheby's auction house sold a rare cypherpunk dubbed "Covid Alien" for a staggering $11.8 million. Just three months later, on Sept. 10, Sotheby's facilitated the action of 101 Bored Ape NFTs in liquidations to talling $24 million.
In November 2021, Sotheby's held the largest NFT charity auction in history, auctioning 140 rare NFTs to raise funds for the non-profit healthcare organization Sostento.
