Auction house Sotheby's launches marketplace for secondary NFT sales

Auction house Sotheby's launches marketplace for secondary NFT sales

On May 1, the company announced an addition to Sotheby’s Metaverse in the form of a “dynamic destination for collecting, buying and selling remarkable digital works.”

The blockchain-based NFT marketplace will primarily serve for secondary sales of digital art. According to the announcement, the marketplace will feature a rotating, curated selection of leading artists hand-picked by Sotheby's specialists.

They provide “expert guidance and context for every work, from thematic presentations to artist spotlights, for an easy-to-navigate experience designed for discovery.”

The next development of #SothebysMetaverse is here! The most trusted and dynamic destination to collect, buy and sell remarkable digital works.

Discover: https://t.co/hZvYIkO3xx pic.twitter.com/dCkaCKlXVm

– Sotheby’s Metaverse (@Sothebysverse) May 1, 2023

Sotheby’s secondary market

Sotheby's launched the Metaverse platform in 2021 for its art auctions, but is now expanding it to handle resales. It supports NFTs minted on Ethereum and the Layer 2 scaling network Polygon.

Automated smart contracts govern the secondary sales process, allowing buyers and sellers to send and receive payments in ETH or MATIC, Polygon's native token. It stated that there is a 2.5% fee for sellers.

Sotheby’s marketplace will be slightly more exclusive than industry leader OpenSea, as only its experts will select the artworks. The featured artists will change every few months, she said, adding that the initial selection will include renowned digital artists such as Tyler Hobbs, Claire Silver, Hackatao, Sam Spratt and Refik Anadol.

The platform is powered by the NFT commerce suite Mojito, developed by Web3 venture studio Serotonin. Sotheby's joined Mojito's $20 million investment round in November 2021.

Michael Bouhanna, Sotheby’s vice president and head of NFTs and digital art, said the move is an important step forward for the auction house in its development in the Web3 space.

In January, the auction house said it would accept crypto in an auction for a rare black diamond.

NFT markets remain flat

NFT markets have declined this year, with trading volumes and prices plummeting. As reported byCryptoPotatoOnly six of the top 20 NFT collections by market capitalization saw increased trading volume last month.

Additionally, the Nonfungible Market Tracker reports that the number of daily sales fell from about 40,000 in October to about 5,000 in mid-April. However, the platform stopped recording NFT metrics since the middle of last month.

Additionally, Cryptoslam reported that there have been more sellers than buyers in the past few weeks.

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