SuperRare AI Nude Portrait Sold for $112.717

The first crypto artwork on Superrare, AI Generated Nude Portrait #1, for the third time in history and sold for 100 ETH or $112.717. In dollar valuation the seller made eight times profit, but in ETH it's just a 30 percent increase. The original creator, Paris-based artist Robbie Barrat, sold the piece for 176 dollars three years ago and made 10 ETH in royalties ever since.

CuriousNFT, the seller of the artwork on Superrare, put AI Generated Nude Portrait #1 up for sale for 150 ETH on January 4th. Within 24 hours the price apparently dropped to 100 ETH and the deal was sealed.

In the past year the crypto art market has increased tremendously. In recent months we've seen regular sales of crypto artworks surpassing the mark of 100 thousand dollars in value. These week Fewocious made a big sale on Niftygateway, while Beeple sold for 3.55 million dollars back in December. Other artists like José Delbo, Micah Johnson and Trevor Jones have been making headlines as well. Even the auction house Christie's dipped their toes into NFTs and crypto art.

It has only been three years since Superrare opened its website. Rarible had its breakthrough last year, same as Niftygateway. These platforms are all onboarding more users into crypto art and the blockchain space in their own way. Niftygateway does this by inviting major artists to mint their art on their platform, while Rarible allow anybody to make a name for themselves.

Blockchain to identify images as originals

Until a couple of years ago it was impossible to find a truly original first edition of a digital image. Timestamps in a search engine could help, think about a timestamp made when you created an image. However, we can easily alter these numbers. Computers allow users to make one thousand copies of an image with a click of a button. There’s no real originality there.

Because of these characteristics of digital images, an image of AI Generated Nude Portrait #1 and Leonardo DaVinci’s Mona Lisa would have to same value: nothing at all. They are mere copies of the original work. The real Mona Lisa is hanging in the Louvre in Paris, and that’s verifiable. The interesting thing is that we can now also verify the original location of AI Generated Nude Portrait #1.

The rise of blockchain technology allows artists to timestamp their work on the blockchain, and creating a cryptographic connection to their digital work. This way the authenticity of the original work can always be verified. It’s blockchain technology that allows digital art to exist and to be verified as unique.