When we discuss NFTs with clients, some of the most talked about topics are creative ownership, provenance, privacy, content theft/unauthorised duplication and whether it’s possible to sell art without the original media file being openly available for download by anyone with an internet connection.
In recent months there have been several technologies that have come to the fore that may solve many of these headaches.
When minting an NFT via many of the major Ethereum NFT marketplaces the artist can lose control of the output and become beholden to third party terms and conditions, while ownership and provenance become a grey areas. Manifold Studio enables artists to have complete creative ownership and preserve on-chain provenance of their work, because artists minting with Manifold effectively become their own platform. This opportunity to own the output extends to collecting royalties and deciding on how the NFT will interact with other smart contracts. Manifold Studio is also interoperable with all major Ethereum NFT marketplaces.
So while Manifold answers many ownership and provenance questions, Pinata Submarine is an interesting solution to security and file access control issues. Submarine provides access permission controls based on NFT ownership for artwork that’s saved to IPFS. Put simply this makes it possible for a lower quality watermarked image to be displayed on a marketplace, while only the customer purchasing the art is given access to download the original high quality file. This provides much higher value for the collector and makes it in their interest not to widely distribute the piece online. This in turn massively reduces the possibility of the art being fraudulently offered for sale elsewhere, or copied and used without license.
So what are the drawbacks of using Manifold Studio and Pinata Submarine on the Ethereum blockchain? Well, first of all, Ethereum transactions are not private by default. All transactions are traceable and are only partially anonymous i.e. people are identified by a wallet address, not name. There is currently no way of obscuring ownership or transaction price. However, for many this isn’t an issue – there have been many millions of NFTs purchased in this way. The biggest concerns therefore are that Pinata Submarine is a proprietary technology and there is currently a $20 per month fee for using the service. This raises questions concerning who would be responsible for these fees on an ongoing basis and what would happen if the product was withdrawn or the company ceased to trade.
OK, what’s the alternative to the Ethereum solution we’ve just discussed? Well, another blockchain called Secret has a lot going for it. For a start Secret NFTs offer privacy by default. Therefore details of the NFT buyer, seller, transaction costs and digital asset details are all protected. Another major advantage of Secret is its built in access control features giving creators the ability to decide who has full access to the artwork being sold. As this is a built in feature there are no ongoing costs associated to it, unlike Pinata Submarine.
So if Secret solves many of the privacy and access control issues, what are the downsides? Well, Secret is less established and more complex. So the barrier for entry is higher and marketing potential possibly lower. However, with Quentin Tarantino due to auction several Secret NFTs in January 2022, the blockchain may gain significant traction through the publicity received.