American online art auctioneer Paddle8 and The Native, a Swiss tech company, are launching a blockchain-based art authentication service, Cointelegraph auf Deutsch reported May 4. Paddle8 will offer a digital certificate, or P8Pass, for each of the thousands of artworks sold online and encode this information on the Bitcoin blockchain.
P8Pass is a digital certificate with data encoded continuously onto a blockchain that will be linked to digital directories, information from museum catalogs, and specialized literature. Every artwork purchased on Paddle8 gets a certificate with direct access to ownership history and authorship information. The service was developed in collaboration with the US tech company Verisart, one of The Native’s minority investments.