Nigerian Digital Artist Sells $75,000-worth of NFT Art

Nigerian Digital Artist Sells $75,000-worth of NFT Art

If you haven’t heard about the latest money-making trend in today’s art market or you have heard but the whole process sounds like jargon to you, then this is what you should be reading to understand what the new-age digital art market of Non-Fungible Token (NFT) art and crypto art selling platforms are all about.

The biggest news in the art market this month is the NFT artwork, Everyday: The First 5000 Days made by an artist named Beeple and which became the third most expensive work by a living artist sold at auction when it sold for an astonishing $69.3m at Christie’s. African digital artists have not been left out of this technology-enabled goldmine as 29-year-old Nigerian artist Jacon Osinachi sold three of his artworks for a total of $75,779 in a period of ten days. 

What exactly is NFT art and how can you sell it on crypto platforms?

NFT means Non-Fungible Token.

‘Fungible’ means something is able to be exchanged or substituted and it will hold the same value, such as the dollar, gold, Bitcoin, Ethereum, casino chips, frequent flyer loyalty points. So if you borrow a $100 note from someone and return two $50 notes, it is still accepted because they hold the same value.

‘Non-Fungible’ is an asset that can’t be substituted. It has unique attributes that make it different from something else in the same asset class like a painting, a cinema ticket, a house, or a trademark. Some of these assets are physical and tangible while some are digital and intangible. 

A Token refers to a digital certificate stored on a secure distributed database called a blockchain. So an NFT is a digital asset that is publicly verifiable intellectual property authenticated on a blockchain. These intellectual properties can include images, music, videos, tweets, works of journalism, real estate, gaming paraphernalia, collectibles – traded on the internet between creators and collectors. 

There are many websites that serve as digital art marketplace to trade NFT art and a creator only need to upload their work and through a process called minting, the blockchain technology which powers the marketplace assigns a unique identity (a digital token) to the art and creates a contract that cannot be changed by anyone. Creators can mint only one edition of the art or a number of limited editions. In addition, one artwork can be minted in different states (still images, animations, silhouettes) with each edition being a unique NFT.

After the art is minted, anyone on the internet can access the marketplace to place a bid and buy the art as an NFT. Secondary sales are another source of income as artists get paid when those who bought their art sell it to other collectors. The blockchain also keeps a track of who owns the digital art at every point in time and this information is accessible to everyone. 

Jacon Osinachi’s artworks Mirror Mirror and Am I Pretty sold on SuperRare for 9 ETH and 13.2 ETH respectively – $16,227 and $23,633 as at when the bids ended on March 14, while another digital art Resignation sold four days earlier for 20 ETH which was $35,919.

Other exciting developments in the world of NFTs include the $2.5m bid for Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey's first-ever tweet which he is attempting to sell as an NFT via the Ethereum blockchain; The media platform, Quartz, turning an article into an NFT and putting it up for sale; Kings of Leon releasing the world's first NFT music album - When You See Yourself; and the first Oscar-nominated film to be released as an NFT. 

The emergence of the blockchain technology that enables NFTs has presented a new source of financial independence and global influence to be tapped, and African artists like Osinachi and others whose works are on Aworanka are doing well to be a part of it.

Jacon Osinachi NFT art
 Jacon Osinachi NFT art
 Jacon Osinachi NFT art

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