Introducing Permissionless Digital Art Auctions on SuperRare

The SuperRare team is excited to introduce two new timed auction mechanisms to the SuperRare platform: Reserve Auctions and Scheduled auctions. Leveraging the power of Ethereum’s smart contracts, SuperRare now has fully trustless English auctions enabled. This new feature adds transparency and security to the whole market, along with more convenience and certainty for artists and collectors.

We’re kicking off the launch of our next-generation auction system with this weeklong special event featuring some of the best-known digital artists, as well as our largest collector to date, Museum of Crypto Art. Each day, three auctions will kick off, showcasing world-class digital art powered by our new on-chain Auction House software.

Early access launch for SuperRare Auction Week on Dec. 7th, 2020; Full public feature launch Dec. 14th, 2020.

Since day one SuperRare has worked to establish standards and build tools that empower the next generation of artists and creators in an art economy.

The SuperRare Auction House is an open source set of smart contracts built on Ethereum. Unlike the auction houses of the past, this new paradigm prevents fraud such as Chandelier or phantom bids by giving participants complete insight into the auction. This transparency is a zero-to-one step for the art market. Every bid in every auction is recorded in the blockchain, adding valuable data points and context to this nascent market.

Scheduled auctions let artists program artwork sales ahead of time, defining auction dates and durations. This makes it easier to plan a release calendar or engage an audience on a specific time window. Each artwork release becomes an event.

Using Reserve Auctions, artists can also set a reserve price which triggers a scheduled timed auction. This is an automated version of the Coldie Method, a mechanism pioneered by SR artist Coldie, which helps artists secure sales while providing collectors with better visibility over the auction timeline.

It’s no exaggeration to say that we couldn’t have built SuperRare Auctions without the SuperRare community. We’ve observed the market and learned so much from this rich ecosystem of artists, collectors, and enthusiasts, and have done our best to bake all of that learning into the design our new auctions. If you have feedback, hop in our Discord and let us know!

Read more about how the new auction system works here.