In a world where art forgery moves billions of dollars and can deceive even experts, blockchain technology emerges as a powerful ally to ensure authenticity, provenance, and security in the art market. From Renaissance paintings to digital collections in NFT format, recording the history of a work transparently and immutably can make the difference between legitimate and fraudulent.
Emblematic cases in recent years have highlighted the issue —such as the scandal of a historic gallery in New York, which was closed after decades of selling fake paintings as if they were by renowned artists. If technologies like blockchain had been in use, that type of fraud could have been detected —or even prevented— much earlier.
In this article, we tell you how a technology that seems exclusive to the crypto world can have much more to do with art than you imagine.
How does blockchain come into play?
Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that allows information to be stored in a decentralized, transparent, and unalterable manner. In the context of art, it means that each work can have a digital certificate of authenticity, where key information is recorded such as: author, year, technique, ownership history, restorations, or exhibitions.
These data are recorded in public and verifiable blocks, and cannot be altered later. This eliminates (or drastically reduces) the possibilities of documentary fraud. Thus, the market no longer depends exclusively on the word of an expert or an institution: there is a decentralized, objective, and verifiable validation.
NFTs and smart contracts in the art world
One of the best-known applications of blockchain in art is NFTs (non-fungible tokens). Each NFT represents a unique and indivisible item that may be linked to a digital or even physical work. It acts as a certificate of authenticity and ownership, traceable from the original artist to the current buyer.
Furthermore, smart contracts —automated programs that run on blockchain— can set conditions such as royalties for the artist on each resale, transfer rules, or authenticity validation before a transfer.
In other words: smart contracts eliminate intermediaries, reduce costs, and streamline operations, increasing legal and technical security for all parties.
Real cases and the transformative role of blockchain
One of the most scandalous cases in recent art is Knoedler & Company, a New York gallery that sold, for nearly two decades, works falsely attributed to artists like Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. It is estimated that over 80 million dollars were moved in transactions of works without verified authenticity.
With a system based on blockchain, where the history of each work was digitally recorded from the origin, those forgeries would have been much easier to detect. Or they would have been impossible to sustain for so long. This is the promise of technology: transparency in a historically opaque market.
Initiatives that are already functioning
By 2025, several platforms are already using blockchain to authenticate art, both physical and digital. Some of the most prominent are:
Verisart: offers digital certificates for physical works and NFTs, validated by curators and public records on blockchain.
Artory: works with galleries and auction houses to create digital databases of verifiable provenance.
Codex Protocol: decentralized system for collectibles and art, functioning as a digital "civil registry" of ownership.
Zora Foundation: in the NFT universe, allows artists to tokenize their works and sell them directly, maintaining total traceability of value.
Additionally, museums and cultural entities are beginning to explore blockchain to certify and digitally archive their collections —an innovation that also contributes to the conservation, insurance, and international lending of works.
Benefits for artists, collectors, and investors
The adoption of blockchain in the art world generates concrete impacts:
Artists: gain more control over their creations and can receive automatic commissions on each resale.
Collectors: have greater security regarding the authenticity, provenance, and traceability of each work.
Investors: operate in a more reliable and transparent market, with traceable assets and standardized digital documentation.
Furthermore, tokenization allows fractional ownership of valuable works, making investing in art accessible to more people —something unthinkable a few years ago, especially in regions like Latin America.
Limitations and challenges
Despite progress, the union between art and blockchain still faces obstacles. Not all market players are ready to adopt new technologies, and there is resistance within certain traditional institutions.
There is also the ongoing challenge of physical verification: even if the digital certificate is on blockchain, the verification of the physical object still relies on traditional methods.
Another problem is the lack of standardization: each platform may use different certification formats, making interoperability between systems difficult. Therefore, initiatives aimed at unifying criteria and achieving global recognition of digital records are key.
A new chapter in the art market
The integration between blockchain and art is not only a technological transformation but also a cultural one. In a sector where trust has always been subjective, the ability to validate, track, and protect works in an objective and unalterable manner represents a radical change.
Everything indicates that in the coming years, blockchain will become an essential component of the art market —especially in high-value transactions, digital collections, and institutional programs.
And if it seems distant, remember that real-world assets are already being tokenized today, from real estate to stocks. Art is just the next step.
The technology does not yet solve all problems, but it undoubtedly paves the way for a safer, more accessible, and fair market. And in times of increasingly sophisticated forgeries, digital authenticity could very well be the masterpiece of this new era.
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