Blockchain Papers

Ran Duchin, Da Huang, Jeffrey Yang

No abstract is available for this record.

B S Jayasri, V. Balaji, Praveen Narayan Bhat, Riteesh Deepak Pai · 6 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Olga N. Volkova

Cryptocurrencies are a type of financial instrument that has been widely used by financial market participants since the early 2010s. Despite their growing popularity, their status within financial systems across different countries remains a topic of ongoing discussion. There is still no consensus on how to best understand the economic nature of these digital assets. This paper uses discourse analysis and content analysis to explore the various interpretations of cryptocurrencies’ economic nature. The paper argues that the interpretation of cryptocurrency’s economic nature depends heavily on the perspective of the stakeholder and the intended purpose of using the term. It considers arguments both for and against treating cryptocurrencies as commodities, currencies (including electronic and private currencies), or properties (assets, such as financial assets). It concludes that traditional cryptocurrencies do not meet the criteria for being considered money, and only central bank-issued digital currencies can fulfill all the functions associated with money. Decentralized cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, cannot be classified as securities because there are no companies or organizations that issue these assets and bear any obligations under them. Instead, these assets have the characteristics of commodities. Different types of cryptocurrencies can be treated as either commodities or securities for tax purposes, depending on the specific circumstances. At the same time, assets with unique characteristics and behavior in the financial market may be included in a separate category for accounting purposes, or if the state allows for the use of cryptocurrencies in transactions without restrictions, they can be considered equivalent to cash.

Nataliia Kochkina, Michela Floris, Borys Kharchenko

No abstract is available for this record.

Peiwen Xie

Digital art has been increasingly popular with the development of blockchain technology. Blockchain technology provides a form of protection for digital art sellers and buyers as it enables verifiable and tamper-proof records of ownership of digital artworks. In addition, it also records the information and transaction history of the artworks and allows public access to the information with exceptional transparency. Hence, it not only offers digital artists a new format to sell and promote their works but also allows researchers to observe the market activities. Thus, in this thesis, I focus on the subset of digital arts with information and transaction histories recorded on the blockchain. A digital artwork/collectible (e.g., image, video, music) recorded on the blockchain is also called a non-fungible token (NFT). NFTs are becoming an increasingly popular form of art investment, with rocketed market growth in 2021. However, both consumers and sellers face uncertainty in the market activities. Consumers encounter uncertainty when making purchase decisions as there are no established valuation guidelines for NFTs. Sellers confront uncertainty when creating artwork owing to the lack of knowledge about consumer demand. Thus, this thesis investigates two different topics that surround uncertainty in the NFT market. Chapter 1 examines herding behavior in NFT auctions and the moderating role of visual complexity and familiarity. Auction is one of the most popular selling formats in the NFT market. Given the valuation uncertainty for NFTs, consumers’ bidding tendencies would be influenced by other collectors’ bidding decisions (herding behavior). I build a model on bid continuation probability to capture the herding behavior in the primary auctions. In addition, the visual cues are essential in evaluating the artwork. In this regard, I examine how visual complexity and familiarity affect herding behavior, as these two visual characteristics usually affect both the ease of understanding and recognizing the visual stimulus. I use a computer vision technique to quantify the visual complexity of an NFT, and apply transfer learning to measure its visual familiarity. The findings show that there is herding behavior in NFT auctions, and visual complexity and familiarity both exhibit a U-shape moderating effect on herding tendency. This research further tests the subsequent impact of herding behavior in the primary auctions on the auction winners’ resale decisions. Results suggest that auction winners are more willing to resale the NFT and set a higher price premium when there is stronger herding behavior in the primary auctions. This research contributes to herding, NFT, and creative content production literature, and provides managerial implications for content creators and market platforms to promote sales. Chapter 2 investigates how sellers can enhance revenue and benefit from introducing consumer uncertainty in product assignment (i.e., probabilistic selling). Probabilistic selling has become an increasingly popular and relevant phenomenon across industries, from traditional online travel agencies (e.g., probabilistic hotel rooms), retailing (e.g., clothing, and cosmetics subscription boxes) to digital gaming (e.g., in-game products), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), etc. However, despite the market prevalence, there is no empirical investigation into the actual benefit of marketers employing probabilistic selling to the best of our knowledge. Leveraging a feature change in an NFT marketplace, this research quantifies the effect of adopting probabilistic selling on sellers’ monthly revenue using three estimators (i.e., two-way fixed effect DiD, staggered DiD, and aggregate synthetic DiD). Results consistently show that probabilistic selling increases adopters’ monthly revenue within the range of $500.455 to $665.869. In addition, this research finds three underlying mechanisms that drive the revenue lift: protection provision on the transparent market, increased market thickness and matches, and enhanced market matching efficiency. At the same time, alternative mechanisms are discussed and ruled out. These findings add to the probabilistic selling, uncertain marketing and NFT literature. This research also provides managerial implications for sellers to increase sales and for market platforms to promote market participation and enhance market matching efficiency.

Cira Grippa

L’utilizzo e la diffusione di nuovi strumenti tecnologici nella produzione delle opere determinano e allo stesso tempo riflettono il cambiamento nel nostro modo di interpretare l’arte, anche attraverso nuove modalità di fruizione e godimento. Il riferimento è alle diverse modalità di creazione e di riproduzione delle opere artistiche e alla loro successiva circolazione, ma anche all’affermazione di movimenti, quali la cripto-arte, in grado di favorire la digitalizzazione dell’arte, ovvero la sua dematerializzazione. L’arte, in definitiva, diventa essa stessa campo di sperimentazione tecnologica, in considerazione delle esperienze relative all’operatività dell’intelligenza artificiale, alla digitalizzazione delle opere d’arte fisiche o alla creazione stessa di opere digitali. Il dialogo aperto e continuo tra arte e innovazione tecnologica (e, nello specifico, con la blockchain, i non fungible token, l’intelligenza artificiale) segna un’importante fase storica di rinnovamento per l’arte. Al contempo, l’ampliamento delle sue forme e tecniche di manifestazione ha un’importante e dibattuta ricaduta sul piano dell’inquadramento giuridico, della attribuzione e proteggibilità delle opere che ne sono nuova espressione.

David Krause

No abstract is available for this record.

K.S.K.G. Ariyasinghe, W.M.A. Cooray, W.K.H. Alwis, Dilshan K.T · 6 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

P.A. Wilson, Peter Tolmie

No abstract is available for this record.

Joanna Myślińska-Wieprow, Magdalena Gądek

No abstract is available for this record.

Ignacy Nieweglowski, Aviv Yaish, Fahad Saleh, Fan Zhang

Cryptoassets launched by political figures, e.g., political finance (PoliFi) tokens, have recently attracted attention. Chief among them are the eponymous tokens backed by the 47th president and first lady of the United States, TRUMPandMELANIA. We empirically analyze both, and study their impact on the broad decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem. Via a comparative longitudinal study, we uncover a "Trump Effect": the behavior of these tokens correlates positively with presidential approval ratings, whereas the same tight coupling does not extend to other cryptoassets and administrations. We additionally quantify the ecosystemic impact, finding that the fervor surrounding the two assets was accompanied by capital flows towards associated platforms like the Solana blockchain, which also enjoyed record volumes and fee expenditure.

Martina D'Onofrio

NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) and blockchain are revolutionizing the art market by offering advantages in terms of traceability and authenticity of works. Through blockchain, every transaction is recorded transparently and immutably, ensuring provenance and control over the circulation of the artwork. NFTs certify the uniqueness of a digital work, acting as a guarantee of authenticity and tracking each ownership transfer. Additionally, NFTs enable the tokenization of art, breaking ownership into shares, making it accessible to a broader audience and creating new investment and engagement opportunities.

Françoise Benhamou

No abstract is available for this record.

Yang You, Lin Chen, Li Liao, Xincheng Wang · 6 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Geun-Cheol Lee, Hoon-Young Koo, Heejung Lee

In this study, we propose a valuation methodology for Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), focusing on the profile picture (PFP) NFT category represented by the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). To identify the attributes that influence the value of individual BAYC NFTs, we develop a hedonic pricing model that uses the NFT’s value as the dependent variable and its properties as independent variables. We apply Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) to quantify attributes of NFTs. Three hedonic models—linear, quadratic, and full quadratic—are proposed. For the full quadratic model, we introduce a systematic procedure to select first-order, second-order, and interaction terms in the model. To evaluate the performance of the proposed models, we carried out comparative computational experiments. We collected actual BAYC transaction data and split it into a training set (70%) and a validation set (30%). For benchmarking purposes, we compare the proposed models against four machine learning algorithms: Random Forest, Support Vector Regression (SVR), XGBoost, and LightGBM. The machine learning models perform well on the training set, however, this was largely due to overfitting. In contrast, the proposed hedonic models maintained consistent performance with minimal degradation from the training to the validation set. Among them, the full quadratic model demonstrates the highest explanatory power on the validation set in terms of adjusted R² and other evaluation metrics.

Benhaça, Nadia

Cette recherche interroge les mutations du champ artistique à l’ère numérique à travers l’émergence des NFTs comme dispositifs de circulation, de légitimation et de monétisation. S’appuyant sur une analyse de contenu (X, Reddit) et une enquête par questionnaire (artistes et institutions), il examine dans quelle mesure ces technologies participent à une désintermédiation réelle ou tendent à reconduire, sous d’autres formes, les logiques de pouvoir, de hiérarchisation et de sélection caractéristiques au champ de l’art traditionnel. L’étude explore les tensions entre les promesses d’autonomie portées par le Web3 et les configurations concrètes observées dans un écosystème structuré par des plateformes, des algorithmes et des logiques économiques variables.

Παρθένα Θ. Αμανατιάδου

The concept of NFTs is tightly associated with the arrival of Web 3.0 in the digital world. Despite the increased aspirations for this new technological phenomenon with promises of protection, new paths of economic exploitation, and innovation, the reality seems more complex. Under the blockchain ecosystem, it is evident that NFTs present a unique structure that is far from what the EU legislator could imagine during the drafting of the EU copyright law regime. This raises the central issue of how NFTs should be legally treated under EU copyright law. Specifically, which actions related to NFTs fall within the scope of the economic rights granted to authors? What distinguishes a lawful minting process from an act of copyright infringement? These questions are tightly associated with the context of digital artworks. However, the main obstacle remains the absence of a clear law regime and case-law regarding Art NFTs. Consequently, this fluidity creates ambiguities between the owners and the buyers for the ownership regime. The purpose of this article is to clear the blurry legal atmosphere related to the application of the EU copyright law to Art NFTs. More specifically, “How Art NFTs interact with copyright? Is there a level of protection that is ensured? In the event of a copyright infringement, who should be held liable? To answer these questions, the research will begin by examining the technological “personality” of NFTs, focusing on the key elements that ensure their functionality as unique tokens. After that, a legal analysis will follow concerning the interaction with the EU copyright regime whether they are eligible for copyright protection, and what economic rights are entailed during the creation of an NFT. Finally, the possible ownership scenarios will be presented and the cases of infringement in the governance of these digital assets.

Fernando Carbajo Cascón

Abstract The market for the sale of art-NFTs is a reality, but due to their diffuse legal nature, there are many doubts about this business model from a legal perspective. This raises uncertainties as to whether it is possible to recognise a property right over the NFT as a digital asset and an online distribution rights model, where the principle of exhaustion is recognised from the intellectual property law perspective.

Henri Beyer, Patrick Seidel, Sven Stahlmann, Detlef Schoder

No abstract is available for this record.

Syamsul Bahrin Zaibon, Siti Irna Mustajap, Adzira Husain, Mohd Amirul Helmi Ismail · 9 authors

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) have been developed over the past few years as an impactful new digital asset class that allows both artists and cultural institutions to securely generate revenue from their digital creations while protecting them. However, limited research exists that fully addresses the integration of NFTs and smart contracts as a technological framework for preserving and promoting artistic and cultural heritage in Malaysia. While there has been much discussion about the economic advantages of NFTs paired with smart contracts, the technical backbone infrastructure remains largely unexplored in many ways for cultural preservation. The research explores NFTs and smart contracts to offer automated royalties and an unprecedented transfer of ownership system with cultural impact. This research, through a mixed-method approach-including a literature review, interviews with experts, and the formulation of relevant mathematical models-conducted an analysis of how smart contracts automate the NFT transaction and royalty distribution. The results have so far shown that, underpinned by blockchain technology, NFTs can offer a promising solution to present and future Malaysian artists and cultural institutions in ensuring the authenticity and financial viability of traditional and modern forms of art. Besides that, scalability, environmental concerns, and legal frameworks are several sober challenges to widespread adoption. Finally, this research concludes that NFTs and smart contracts have the potential to revolutionize Malaysia's cultural economy by offering a sustainable model for heritage preservation and a supporter of the arts in general.

Е.А. АРАКЧЕЕВА

Коллекционирование искусства ведет историю еще с IV в. до н. э. Искусство изменялось вместе с научными открытиями, а коллекции - вместе с мотивацией коллекционеров. Большую роль в трансформации арт-рынка и формировании частных и музейных коллекций России XXI в. сыграла цифровизация изобразительного искусства, а также появление технологии невзаимозаменяемого токена (NFT). В статье рассмотрены факторы, влияющие на формирование коллекций изобразительного искусства, и описаны цифровые технологии создания предметов искусства. Кроме того, проанализированы предпосылки для создания виртуальных галерей и их роль в формировании коллекционера нового типа - инвестирующего в цифровое искусство. Fine art collecting dates from the 4th century BC. The art changed together with scientific discoveries, and collections - with the motivation of collectors. The main role in the transformation of the art market and the formation of private and museum collections in Russia in the 21 st century was played by both the digitalization of fine arts, and the emergence of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The article deals with factors influencing the formation of fine art collections, and describes digital technologies of creating works of art. Besides, the presuppositions of creating virtual galleries and their role in forming a new kind of collector investing in digital art are analyzed.

Murat Tunç, Hasan Cavusoglu, Zhiqiang Zheng

Resale royalties, first introduced in the 1920s to support artists through a share of future resales, have now adopted by nonfungible token (NFT) marketplaces for digital art trading. Although these royalties are often viewed as beneficial for creators, our research reveals unexpected consequences. Using data from a major NFT marketplace, we find that NFTs with higher royalty rates sell for significantly lower prices and take longer to sell. Surprisingly, creators do not recoup these initial losses through royalty payments within four years. We discover that higher up-front minting costs lead creators to set higher royalty rates. We reveal a delayed gratification effect where creators with higher royalties accept lower up-front prices in hopes of future royalty income. We also find an overconfidence effect where confident creators, measured by their past sales and follower count, are more likely to lower initial prices. Our research contributes to the ongoing debate about royalty enforcement in NFT marketplaces and offers empirical evidence to inform platforms and creators. Platform managers should carefully consider both reducing up-front minting costs and implementing royalty rate limits to improve market liquidity. Creators should be cautious about setting high royalty rates as they may not provide the expected financial benefits.

Claudia S. Quiñones Vilá

This article examines recent developments in United States (US) intellectual property (IP) law that directly affect the art market, namely: 1) the judicial interpretation of fair use and the use of copyrighted material to train AI systems; 2) the US Copyright Office’s refusal to register certain AI-generated works; and 3) the application of trademark law to NFTs (Non-fungible tokens). The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the constantly evolving legal landscape in this field while highlighting controversies that will likely continue to arise in the near future. As a jurisdiction where new technologies, the art market, and IP case law overlap, the US is in a unique position to reflect ongoing changes as well as in-depth interpretations of existing provisions.

Yunfei Zhao

No abstract is available for this record.