"Minting" Turning Digital Art into a Digital Asset

By Rah Crawford

My previous article shared the concept of a digital asset and how digital scarcity is a new frontier of understanding for the “plugged-in” world. A place where artists can sell digital copies of their works, musicians can sell copies of their album covers, and publishers can sell covers of their comics, magazines and books. The potential for an entirely new market has been birthed and it’s just down the road — right out on the horizon, just a handful of years ahead of the mainstream. 

But the big question is — How can you turn a digital file into a digital asset?

Like most objectives in life, there are often more ways than one to achieve your goal. There are several platforms that I’ve come across that allow you to upload your files so they can be “minted” or officially placed on a blockchain. Once “on-chain” your files are recorded onto a distributed ledger which securely documents the file, the creator's info, date, time, number of items available for sale, as well as additional metadata connected to the file. Platforms like Superrare also function as communities for digital artists — with its own art celebs, high profile exhibitions, and record-breaking sales moments of $10,000 and higher for digital artworks.

"Blinking Van Gogh" (2020) is a Digital Art enhancement of Vincent Van Gogh's Self-Portrait from 1887. This enhanced image was made by World Owned Creative Agency. The original painting by Van Gogh is a (CC0) Creative Commons image, and is available for open use in the public domain.

Since the collecting of digital assets is a new phenomenon, it would be safe to assume that many new markets and industries will surface in the upcoming years. Each market or industry could potentially have its own passionate community of collectors and celebs that push sales numbers higher and higher. 

In the search for a platform that could help us create our own NFT  store and digital collectibles, I came across mintbase and was really excited about their clean design and easy to navigate interface. For our initial launch, we created a store called WO Marketplace which can also be viewed on OpenSea, a marketplace for digital goods, including collectibles, gaming items, digital art, and other digital assets that are backed by a blockchain like Ethereum.

Our first minting was "Blinking Van Gogh" (2020), a digital art enhancement of Vincent Van Gogh's Self-Portrait from 1887. The original painting by Van Gogh is a (CC0) Creative Commons image, and is available for open use in the public domain. Five copies of this limited edition cover image were made available for purchase on the blockchain as a crypto art collectible in the debut of our very own store.

And so, with a bit of persistence and creativity, we were able to turn our digital art into a digital asset that can now be sold in our very own digital collectibles store!