Artprice, the global leader in art price and art index databanks, has announced its blockchain project for the art market. It has developed its own proprietary Art Market Blockchain, protected under intellectual property law.

It believes that in the longer term the blockchain will substantially improve the payment of reproduction rights and other related rights to recognized copyright companies like the ADAGP in France which collects copyright duties in 43 countries.

Artprice has built a distributed database that contains specifications of years of complaints and lawsuits between the different segments of the Art Market chain and, particularly, their relations with tax authorities and State judicial and customs services.

It is confident of the success of the blockchain it has developed because it is the result of a consensus linking proof of work with proof of participation. Artprice said that its blockchain will reduce transaction costs both for auctioneers and for galleries and museums, and claims that it will replace catalogues raisonnés, which are subject to known defaults, weaknesses and 'subjectivity', thereby becoming a sort of universal catalogue raisonné.

Artprice's Blockchain will allow the total control of data, the management of copyright payments, the traceability of artworks, the tracking of stolen or lost artworks, their tracking by custom authorities and the localisation of artworks at any given moment.

Artprice said that it will gradually install its blockchain throughout its IT systems interacting with the global Art Market. This will streamline and authenticate transactions, giving collectors and art buyers the confidence required to make the Art Market transparent. It will also assure buyers and sellers that their data will be freely duplicated, via Artprice's Blockchain, to millions of servers worldwide, and therefore unfalsifiable.

Artprice's Blockchain will be compatible with IPv6 (network protocole without connexion of layer 3 of the OSI - Open Systems Interconnection) and IPv4.

In addition, Artprice has made a considerable investment in acquiring the Swiss company Xylogic whose technical team developed the e-SA3 (e-Solutions for Art and Auction). Xylogic's client base includes several major Art Market players and its e-Solution has a major and unique technological lead on the Art Market, primarily via its powerful proprietary algorithms.