Today auction house Christie’s announced that it will auctioning off its first-ever purely digital art, a unique 1/1 artwork by Beeple titled EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS. The artwork is minted as a non-fungible token (NFT) on Ethereum and will be on auction at Christie’s starting February 25, 2021. See auction details.

This represents the first time a purely-digital art has been picked up for auction by one of the traditional art auction houses, and is an exciting development in the digital art space for several reasons.

First, Christie’s has a broad mailing list and network, making it possible to reach and educate more traditional collectors about the value proposition of digital art. It will be super interesting to watch the auction and see who is participating.

Second, the auction house is a household name and strong influence in the art world, and by auctioning an NFT-backed digital artwork, they are sending a strong signal that digital art is an upcoming trend worth watching.

Third, the choice of featuring the work of Beeple–a prolific, internet-native artist–as the first digital artwork to auction indicates that at least some people in the traditional art space believe that a new generation of digital artists are on the rise, rather than choosing to issue an NFT as, say, a digital certificate of authenticity for a more traditional fine artist.

It is amazing to see how far the digital art scene has come since SuperRare first brought NFTs to Christie’s in summer 2018 and did a mass giveaway in partnership with Robbie Barrat and Artnome.

Exciting times ahead!

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.