What's good in the hood, folks? I'll tell you what. Today my guest is — Boris Pevzner, Co-Founder and CEO of LiveArt.
Chris: Thanks for taking the time with me. You created The Web3 Platform for Art and Culture. Where did the inspiration to create something like this come from?
Boris: Recent technological innovations–from digitization, to social media, to Web3–have transformed the art market, and there is an even greater transformation in store as we look to the future. For artists, Web3 is an opportunity to explore new digital media, from generative art to AI, and it offers a safe and authenticated way of sharing and selling their work, with provenance and ownership registered on-chain. Web3 also gives financial power back to the artists, by embedding resale royalties into smart contracts. Additionally, Web3 is redefining the collector and artist relationship by prioritizing a community-centered approach to creating, collecting, and sharing ideas and interests. LiveArt’s founding team recognized the need for technology that builds upon these opportunities, but that is also easy to use and widely accessible. LiveArt has not only developed a range of products that serve these needs, but has become a centralized resource for artists, collectors, brands, and institutions along every step of their journeys in Web3 and collecting.
Chris: Wonderful! Can you tell us about your team? The core-team, specifically. What are your backgrounds?
Boris: LiveArt is founded and led by a team of tech and art industry experts, representing an unparalleled mix of experience that has enabled the rapid growth and adoption of our products by the arts and culture industry. My co-founders and I are serial entrepreneurs, who, among us, have founded more than ten companies. My previous company Collectrium, born from my background in software engineering and AI, was acquired by Christie’s. Adam Chinn is the former COO of Sotheby’s and is also a cofounder of Art Intelligence Global (AIG). John Auerbach is CEO of fine art storage company Uovo and previously led e-commerce strategy for Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and global fashion companies like Kate Spade and Gilt. Our leadership team also includes veterans from major auction houses, media companies, and ecommerce titans.
Chris: Now let's talk about technicalities. What should our readers know in general about your platform? What are its main advantages?
Boris: LiveArt is the leading Web3 platform for art and culture. Our platform and products reflect the most significant ways that the arts and culture space is evolving—and will evolve in the future—through the possibilities of technology. We have three core offerings, all powered by data: The first is our easily accessible LiveArt Art Database, allowing users to search for any artist’s historical art sales records. The second is the decentralized, peer-to-peer LiveArt Trading Floor, allowing users to buy and sell high value physical artworks, while maintaining their anonymity. Together, these two offerings address major pain points of the traditional art market, which is frequently challenged by access to data and usually requires the engagement of third parties for buying and selling, limiting the privacy of transactions and increasing costs for the seller. The third element of our business is the range of Web3 tech and services we provide, including white label support for artists, brands, institutions, and others seeking to enter Web3. We also work directly with top traditional artists from the physical art world, empowering them to create their first digital art collections, which engage the art world and crypto audiences alike.
Chris: You have an "Art Database"—what can users find there?
Boris: The first of its kind and free to use, the LiveArt Art Database is a critical tool for art sellers and collectors to understand the current market value of an artwork. We are the most comprehensive art database available, providing unlimited access to over 10 million auction records updated in real-time, live streams from the top 25 auction houses globally, and proprietary pricing data gathered from private sales from our own Trading Floor. Through a combination of AI, analytics, quantitative support, comparables, and contextual information about each artist, LiveArt offers price estimates for hundreds of thousands of artists, which our users can access just by typing in an artist’s name.
Chris: How big of a role does the community play in your business? Is it big already?
Boris: Community is everything. We are powered by our ever-growing community of over 1 million users across digital art and Web3, as well as from the world of physical art. LiveArt provides opportunities for these communities to intersect and come together. Through our frequent Twitter Spaces and Discord Server, we are able to directly interact with our community in real time. Our Instagram and newsletter provide regular insights into both our physical and digital offerings. In real life meet-ups and pop-up exhibitions allow us to meet collectors and creators in real time, all over the world. Our connections with artists and institutions allow us to reach their audiences too, creating an ever-expanding global community of art lovers.
Chris: What is a "Trading Floor”?
Boris: LiveArt’s Trading Floor is our signature offering—it is a first-of-its-kind decentralized and completely free trading platform that puts power in the hands of the buyers and sellers to request, offer, sell, and buy top tier artworks privately, securely, and anonymously online. Listings are vetted by LiveArt’s team of art industry veterans, and transactions are limited to pre-qualified buyers and sellers, supported by multiple levels of security and encryption. We expanded the Trading Floor in November 2022 with several brand new and enhanced features, including the ability for users to:
- Leverage LiveArt’s industry-leading data and AI-powered analytics to make informed trading decisions.
- Make direct, private sale offers to users seeking specific works.
- Negotiate and close sales privately and anonymously through online Deal Rooms.
- Receive personalized notifications for new buy and sell requests from LiveArt’s rapidly growing user base of collectors, dealers, and advisors.
Chris: Tell us about your token please.
Boris: The LiveArt token, $ART, is a utility token providing access to the full range of our projects and partners. Designed to bring users together, it is owned, managed, and driven by our diverse global community of collectors, curators, and creators with the goal of providing access to elevated decentralized experiences in art and culture. The token is backed by key players in the industry, including the investment arms of the biggest crypto exchanges such as Binance, OKX, and KuKoin; and some of the most important VCs in Web3, including Hashkey and Animoca Brands. We have already used the $ART token to power our own community for membership NFT drops. The vision is that the token will also power the membership, rewards, and loyalty programs for our partners (artists, galleries, art institutions; and fashion, luxury, entertainment, and other consumer brands). The $ART token also enables LiveArt partners to provide their audiences with decentralized reward programs, configurable utility, and more. Stay tuned as we roll out our $ART Token protocol over the coming months.
Chris: Any last words?
Boris: Not only has the art market just had its best year yet, but we have also seen through this latest crypto bear market that the quality, curated offerings with real utility have been dominating. We are also seeing brand new arts and culture use cases for Web3. At LiveArt we are at the forefront of these innovations, and we are dedicated to providing the best tech driven experiences for the art world, from building out more offerings for our Trading Floor, to reaching larger communities with every NFT collection, powered by our $ART token.
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