Was just thinking, Gnosis Safe Multisig is a great tool for hypothetical on-chain NFT art gallery/DAO group to secure and manage their pieces, particularly high-value ones
— William M. Peaster (@WPeaster) February 6, 2020
(Via the awesome @keikreutler .)
This is a key insight.
Social collaboration around learning to use technology is a key part of its value for art communities. In the net.art era this involved getting online, subscribing to mailing lists, making web sites, etc. . Each step was an opportunity for frustration, assistance, bonding and productive encounters. For blockchain art setting up a wallet, receiving and sending transactions and learning good security practice are equivalent to this in many ways but they lack the ongoing productive, collaborative communication involved in engaging with a listserv.
From experience I would argue that the closest experience to this now for crypto is running an m-of-n multisig wallet. Setting up and testing the wallet, proposing transactions, gathering sufficient signatures, and transmitting the result is just this kind of shared technosocial task. It’s a focus of activity and a spur to communication and learning.
Crucially for representing artworld forms such as collections, you don’t need to add anything to a multisig in order to own an ERC-721 token representing an artwork. It works right out of the box, and doesn’t require setting up or understanding a more complex DAO before explaining it to others.
I’m hoping that we’ll see the emergence of blockchain art multisig groups with strong creative and critical identities. Initially as collectors, then as curators, and eventually as collaborative artists themselves.