Sotheby’s Metaverse has announced a new addition, allowing collectors to buy, sell, and trade digital art with ease. The marketplace is blockchain-based and will primarily focus on secondary sales of digital art.
Curators from Sotheby’s will select leading artists for the platform, providing expert guidance and context for each work, with a theme and spotlight for each artist to help users navigate the marketplace.
The next evolution of #SothebysMetaverse is here! The most trusted and dynamic destination to collect, buy and sell remarkable digital works.
Explore: pic.twitter.com/dCkaCKlXVm
— Sotheby’s Metaverse (@Sothebysverse) May 1, 2023
Sotheby’s Secondary Market
Sotheby’s has expanded its Metaverse platform to handle resales and support NFTs minted on Ethereum and Polygon. Smart contracts will govern the secondary sales process, and payments can be made in ETH or Polygon native token MATIC, with a 2.5% fee for sellers.
The marketplace is more exclusive than industry leader OpenSea, with only Sotheby’s experts selecting the artwork. The featured artists will be rotated every few months and will initially include renowned digital artists such as Tyler Hobbs, Claire Silver, Hackatao, Sam Spratt, and Refik Anadol.
The platform is powered by Mojito, an NFT commerce suite developed by Web3 venture studio Serotonin. In November 2021, Sotheby’s joined the $20 million investment round for Mojito.
Michael Bouhanna, Vice President and Head of NFTs and Digital Art at Sotheby’s, said that the move was an essential step in the auction house’s evolution within the Web3 space.
Sotheby’s also made headlines in January when they accepted cryptocurrency in an auction for a rare black diamond.
NFT Markets Remain Flat
The NFT market has declined this year, with trading volumes and prices falling. A report by CryptoPotato revealed that just six of the top 20 NFT collections by market capitalization recorded increased trading volumes over the past month.
The number of daily sales has plummeted from around 40,000 in October to approximately 5,000 in mid-April, according to Nonfungible market tracker. However, the platform has stopped recording NFT metrics since the middle of last month.
Additionally, Cryptoslam reported that there have been more sellers than buyers over the past couple of weeks.
