Inside Valley – Smart contracts are changing the art market
NFTs crashed after the hype. But one approach is permanently changing the art world: smart contracts between artists and buyers.
In this episode of Inside Valley I look at an approach that is durably changing the art world: smart contracts. NFTs initially drove the market into a frenzy, then collapsed – but the underlying technology continues to have an effect.
Smart contracts are programmes that run on a blockchain and execute themselves automatically when pre-defined conditions are met. For artists this is significant because conditions can be written directly into the work: every time a piece is resold, an agreed share flows back automatically to the original creator. What galleries and auction houses spent decades managing with difficulty now happens without any intermediary.
A gallery in Silicon Valley demonstrates in this video how that works in practice, and how it shifts the relationship between artists, galleries and buyers. What becomes visible: even after the NFT hype has faded, the underlying contract technology remains relevant – not as a speculative asset, but as a tool that creates transparency and participation in a market previously dominated by middlemen.