Crypto-Preservation and the Ghost of Andy Warhol
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The article investigates an interesting and topical subject.
I have only two comments:
- I would add also the case of Warhol's 14 Small Electric Chairs (1980) for the world's first cryptocurrency art auction; and the following reference: Whitaker, A. and Kraessl (2020). Fractional equite, blockchain, and the future of creative work. Management Science, 66(10), 4594-4611.
- I would state at the beginning the research question clearly and develop some concluding remarks (what we learned from the case discussed?), making clear the future research avenues.
Author Response
I appreciate the reviewer's helpful suggestion of citing Warhol's 14 Small Electric Chairs as the world's first cryptocurrency art auction, and have incorporated this into my followup draft because of the obvious connection to the artist and crypto. I added it to a footnote rather than the main text, however, because the focus of this essay as described in the abstract and hinted by the title is the value of the blockchain and NFTs for preservation and authenticity, not simply for the allowance of cryptocurrencies as a form of payment. As its website indicates, the Maecenas platform through which the 14 Small Electric Chairs were sold runs on ERC20, or fungible, tokens. Such a ledger may be used to track exchanges of tokens but not the exchange of unique, "non-fungible" works defined by the later ERC721 standard.
I also am grateful for raising my attention to Whitaker and Kraessl's modeling of fractionalized equity as an alternative revenue model for supporting artists. However, since my essay focuses on the preservation implications rather than the economic impacts of distributed ledgers, I did not find an appropriate place to cite this external source.
As for the statement of the research question, I have added this to a new, third paragraph, and added a summary of conclusions in a penultimate paragraph, both subject to the discipline-specific style described in my cover letter.
Reviewer 2 Report
I am glad I had the opportunity to revise this manuscript. In general, the topic appears very interesting and attempts to discuss a subject of great interest.
I strongly encourage author/s to make some revisions in order to have the paper eligible for publication.
First, the theoretical foundations seem to be not completely and adequately developed, specifically in highlighting an insightful research question.
Secondly, I suggest to read the following paper "Abbate T., Vecco M., Vermiglio C., Zarone V., Perano M., (2021)Blockchain and Art market: resistance or adoption? in, Consumption Markets & Culture." It will help you in understand major issues of blockchain adoption in the art market.
Lastly, the author/s need to better clarify the linkage between theory, case study and findings obtained.
Good luck for the reviews
Author Response
To clarify the theoretical foundations I'm working from, I have added a third paragraph to the introduction that specify the assumptions about the blockchain's ability to secure authenticity that I had previously assumed were implicit in the quotes from Christie's and the Warhol Foundation and the metric by which I am assessing those claims.
I appreciate the reference to Abbate et al., which conducts an empirical study based on interviews that suggests uncertainty about crypto among mainstream art stakeholders. That said, I believe the conclusions of their empirical study on the brick-and-mortar art world's hesitancy to adopt blockchain should be obvious to anyone who has paid attention to this community in the past decade. This conclusion is also largely irrelevant for the special case I examine in my essay, in which one of the art world's most visible fixtures (Christie's) does adopt the technology that frightens off others in the field. Indeed, rather than attempt to merge blockchain and existing art market structures--eg, via certificates of authenticity--Christie's grafted a blockchain-centric approach directly onto what superficially appeared to be a mainstream art sale. So if anything the problem in this case was Christie's blind adoption of the technology without thinking through the disparities between the two worlds beforehand.
Finally, I have tried to make my conclusions more stark by adding a penultimate paragraph to my final section in response to the last suggestion.
Reviewer 3 Report
This is a well argued, highly critical account of NFTs, and as such is a valuable addition to the current debate.
Author Response
I appreciate the commendation.
