LiveArtX is an NFT art trading platform dedicated to creating a global fine art NFT marketplace that connects the traditional art world with Web3, where users can cast, trade and collect items in a web3 environment.

Boris Pevzner is the  CEO and co-founder of LiveArtX. We are honored to have completed an exclusive interview with Boris.

The highlights are below:

1. As a Web3 art curation & incubation (trading) platform, what are the innovation of LiveArtX in term of platform model and its focus ? LiveArtX has received over $4.5 million in funding from investors including Animoca Brands, Binance, etc.  What do you think are the key points that attracted investors to LiveArtX? 

We brought a very strong value proposition to investors. Let me highlight three aspects of it.

First, the macro picture: the premium segment of the digital art market is a rapidly growing space. The traditional art market just had its best year in history: the highest ever gross sales, record-breaking collection sales and individual artwork sales. And the general context of LiveArtX is our roots in the traditional art market. We really, strongly believe that Web3 is disrupting this market. So the opportunity to bring this market into Web3 is enormous. This traditional art market is a $65 billion market, and it's in the midst of a transformation and a shift to Web3. Investors love the enormous opportunity to disrupt large existing markets. So that's one reason.

The second reason is the caliber of the team. My co-founders and I have been working in the art market for a long time. We've founded or co-founded 11 companies among us. One of my companies called Collectrium was acquired by Christie's. Sotheby's acquired the company that my partner Adam co-founded, and then he worked at Sotheby's for two years as ita Chief Operating Officer. And John, our third co-founder, manages the largest art logistics provider in the US and sits on the board of prominent museums. Investors obviously like strong teams who really understand the core markets they are playing in. 

And the third reason is a strongly differentiated, systematic and deliberate approach that we have taken to building LiveArt. We clearly know our focus in the premium market segment of the NFT space. We support both physical and digital trading to reflect the fact that the market is still in transition from Web2 to Web3. And we truly believe that consumers and audiences are core to the success and health of this market. So we’ve developed a global art database, an AI-driven art market analytics product, which is the quantitative underpinning of everything we do. 

2. The goal of LiveArtX is to connect the worlds of Web2 and Web3, what do you think are the big gaps that exist between art products and NFT and what function can LiveArtX serve?

Our mission is to build this bridge to bring traditional art market into Web3, and into the crypto universe. And by the way, the reverse is also true. Only 1% of the crypto natives are currently buying physical art, so the other part of our mission is to get the other 99% of the crypto natives to start getting into physical art. So it's sort of a two-way street. And we do believe that the future art world combines the best of the traditional art industry with the power of the crypto technology. So the next iteration of the spiral is going to use the best crypto technology to advance the art, just like any technology in the past, advancing art to the next frontier. And that's why LiveArt is the platform for both digital and physical art. Web3 is changing, evolving how art is created, how it's traded and how it's licensed and distributed. But there has been no suitable Web3 platform for art and culture until now, so that’s what LiveArt is aiming to be.

3. How does LiveArtX select artists it is willing to cooperate with? What are the reasons that artists are willing to cooperate with LiveArtX, what kind of support LiveArtX can provide in addition to technology?  Do buyers buy NFT launched by LiveArtX more out of recognition of LiveArtX or recognition of the artists' works?

We work with different kinds of artists and creators. First, we work with traditional artists, we help to bring them to Web3 in a way that advances their existing markets, while at the same time feels native to Web3 audiences. Then, for digital artists, especially those who already have a large social media following, they usually want the validation of the art world to reach the next level of their career. So we put them on our platform to connect them with a wider range of collectors. Third, for art institutions – i.e., museums, art fairs, galleries – they launch their artists and projects on our platform under their own brand. And so we provide them with a platform that enable them to do that and provide some assistance in the process.

4. LiveArtX has established a strategic cooperation with OKX Blockdream Capital  in 2022, what aspects does this cooperation include besides investment. What benefits have been brought through this cooperation? And how does the cooperation come about during this period?

OKX Blockdream Ventures has been an amazing partner for us and very supportive. We have done many projects together already, and we hope to do even more in the future. For example, last year we published an NFT collection of 500 NFTs by Reva, a superb digital artist. They were sold out on OKX marketplace in just 8 minutes. It was a big success. For these NFT holders, the NFT effectively serves as a membership to the LiveArtX ecosystem. Our broader community currently counts over 400,000 NFT collectors, and the OKX community is quite a sizable subset of that.

5. LiveArtX recently launched the NFT series X Card for collectors and creators on April 5, please tell us about this X Card product. What approaches does X Card employ to build utilities with reference to buying and holding artwork and interacting with the art world? 

To summarize our vision for the X Card, we believe that mainstream adoption of digital art requires that great artists feel that their best interests are being served, and at the same time that collectors feel that the value of their art is being protected. X Card is therefore our next step toward building a dedicated community of art collectors, not flippers and speculators, and making LiveArtX the platform of choice for the world's top artists. We want to be a home of the world's best artists and the world's best collectors who are moving onto Web3. What X Card does is to create a way for us to cater to this elite group of serious art collectors who are part of our broader community of about 400,000 members.

6. According to the token economic model, 65% of the shares of ART are allocated to community users, what is the purpose of such an economic model? What’s the role of such economic model in LiveArtX ecosystem?

The $ART token is a key part of the LiveArtX ecosystem, it binds our community together. And I think it's very important to emphasize that when we talk about our community, we're talking about the extended community which includes the LiveArtX community (the digital art buying and selling community, the creator community, the collector community) as well as the communities of our partners (museums, art fairs, galleries, consumer brands) that deploy their websites and dApps on our platform. Therefore, the $ART token is not only circulating in our immediate community but also in the communities of our partners, where it provides an important mechanism for creating member loyalty and rewards programs. To summarize, $ART is an extended ecosystem token. That's why the community whre it will be circulating is so large, and that's why we allocate 65% of ART token to community users.

7. Please introduce the operation status of LiveArtX, what are the famous artists LiveArtX has cooperated with, how about the sales volumes of NFT launched by LiveArtX, are there any influential NFT products to introduce? 

We have done many prominent projects and drops on the LiveArt platform already. For example, you probably have heard of Huang Yuxing, one of the top artists in the world today. We took him into Web3, and his first digital project that we launched was sold out under one minute. We just announced the roadmap for the next few months – we're going to drop one project per week on the platform. For example, Yue Minjun, a celebrated artist who has an auction record of $6.9 million and Chen Man, a famous photographer who has exhibited in many museums and has millions of social media followers. So there are a lot of exciting projects in the pipeline.

8. Christie's and Sotheby's conducting NFT art exhibitions and auctions, what is your opinion? How does the traditional art industry see the digital revolution? Do you think the development of the NFT market will break the existing pattern of the art collection and auction market?

Christie’s and Sothey’s are the pillars of the art world, and we already cooperate with them in some ways. So we view them as partners. If you think about the role of these big auction houses in the art market, their traditional role is to be the validator. Whenever an emerging artist comes up at Christie's or Sotheby's, it really validates that now the artist has moved on to the next stage of his or her career. I think that traditional role will continue to some extent in Web3. I think they are very good at creating these kinds of seminal events in the art market that drive the market forward. And I think they'll continue to perform that role. But I also believe that there is a space in the market for a Web3-centric company, like the next Christie's or Sotheby's, but with Web3 principles and technology at the core, and we hope that LiveArtX will occupy that position.

9. Although the rise of NFT is mainly due to the popularity of digital art collections, the application scene of NFT is very broad  in recent years and it has showing an integrated trend with real life, and many NFTs emphasize that everyone can make their own creations. How do you see the NFT market developing in the future? Are you worried that a niche market focused on artwork trading will miss other opportunities and what are the future development plans for LiveArtX?

NFT is a different kind of art medium. Creators are taking advantage of it to bring art to wider audiences. As the NFT market matures, it is beginning to get segmented, and we want LiveArtX to be the flagship platform in the digital art space, the paltform that stands for quality projects, fine art, and the most dedicated collector base.