Christie’s, the 256-year-old fine art auction house, is debuting Christie’s 3.0, an Ethereum-based NFT marketplace with the launch of an exclusive collection from leading Web 3.0 visual artist Diana Sinclair.

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Fast facts

• The New York-based auction house has made waves in the space, most notably by auctioning Beeple’s “Everydays: The First 5,000 Days” artwork for US$69.3 million in March 2021. However, previous NFT sales were not typically conducted on-chain.

• Announced Tuesday, the Christie’s 3.0 marketplace is built so that the entire transaction of an art piece is recorded in full on the Ethereum blockchain. The auction house says it will also provide first of its kind anti-money laundering, compliance and taxation tools built into the platform.

• Similar to Christie’s physical fine art sales, NFTs offered on Christie’s 3.0 will be highly curated artworks from established artists. The market’s inaugural sale will begin Wednesday, offering a collection of nine NFTs from Diana Sinclair, a 18-year-old internationally-awarded artist.

• Christie’s platform was developed in partnership with Manifold, a startup focusing on the smart contract technology behind NFTs. Other partners include blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis and metaverse platform Spatial to help expand the marketplace’s capabilities.

• “The launch of Christie’s 3.0 signifies an institutional expansion of the regulated market for digital assets, which both validates NFTs as an art form and provides incredible benefits for digital artists,” said Eric Diep, cofounder of Manifold.

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