Privacy-Preserving Tokenisation of Artworks (PABLO)

Art and collectibles markets tend to involve lower liquidity and higher fees than public equity markets. Distributed ledger technology can tokenize artworks and collectibles so that claims to these assets can be exchanged digitally without intermediaries. Tokenisation offers investors access to a global market plus a digitized paper trail, as well as new options for the fractional ownership of artworks, art-collateralized loans, and yield-bearing art assets. The main challenge for tokenization researchers and platform developers is to simultaneously satisfy regulators’ demands for transparency and auditability as well as art investors’ demands for privacy. New technological solutions are needed, so that market participants can disclose the absolute minimum amount of information that is required by regulators. We explore new concepts from distributed ledger technology, cryptography, and digital identity management that can help address this challenge.

Academic publications: 

Barbereau, T., Sedlmeir, J., Smethurst, R., Fridgen, G., Rieger, A. (2022) “Chapter 8: Tokenization and Regulatory Compliance for Art and Collectibles Markets,” Blockchains and the Token Economy: Theory and Practice (eds. Mary Lacity and Horst Treiblmaier), Palgrave-Macmillan.