Atsur is fixing African artwork’s provenance downside with blockchain

Artwork—how we create, retailer, purchase, and distribute it—has taken completely different varieties throughout a number of centuries. In 2020, as a uncommon international pandemic despatched the world indoors and compelled them to remain digitally linked, blockchain, an rising know-how, powered new obsessions. Amongst its boldest cultural experiments have been non-fungible tokens (NFTs), a know-how many believed would perpetually change how artwork was owned, valued, and distributed.

We noticed the headlines: NFT artworks minted millionaires globally. OpenSea, launched in 2017, turned the main NFT market within the US and achieved unicorn standing in 2021. Quickly, consideration turned to Yuga Labs, the corporate behind “Bored Ape Yacht Membership,” which helped outline the aesthetics and economics of early NFT tradition.

However for all of the headlines NFT artwork attracted, it did little to handle the issues which have lengthy plagued the African artwork ecosystem: provenance, safety, and cost. 

Adaobi Orajiaku, founding father of Nigerian art-tech startup Atsur, which launched in 2024 as an NFT market for bodily artwork items, noticed a manner to make use of blockchain know-how to archive bodily African artwork.

“Artwork in Africa is centuries outdated, however how we handle and defend it hasn’t caught up,” she stated. “Except a Western gallery or collector discovers you, your work can disappear into historical past, even when it’s nice.”

Worse, after we fail to protect these prehistoric works and the oeuvre of outstanding skills, we open the door to an age-old downside: faux artworks develop into rampant out there.

“Your paintings is a faux”

At present, Nigerian artwork arguably enjoys wider international enchantment. Acclaimed twentieth century artists and sculptors like Ben Enwonwu, whose bronze sculpture, Atlas, fetched over $500,000 at a Sotheby’s public sale in 2021, are lastly receiving the worldwide recognition they deserve. Works by Bruce Onobrakpeya, the late Yusuf Grillo, and Peju Alatise have develop into staples in African trendy artwork gross sales. 

However with this hovering demand comes heightened danger; forgery lurks as a Malicious program, with faux artwork peddlers standing to revenue from the bubble.

It doesn’t assist that Nigeria’s artwork and artistic sector—which contributed between 0.2% and a pair of.5% yearly to its gross home product (GDP) within the final 4 years because the adverse all-time low (-3%) in 2020—is extremely opaque. Provenance—the documented historical past of an paintings’s possession—is usually stored informally, typically solely by reminiscence. 

In lots of native galleries, artworks are tracked by means of handwritten receipts, unverified certificates, and images saved on Microsoft Excel spreadsheets on desktops. Forgeries can slip by means of simply with out a normal provenance, particularly when artworks are resold by auctioneers overseas. In South Africa, the place the market is bigger and barely extra regulated, specialists estimate forgeries are a bi-weekly prevalence. Nigeria, missing even that stage of oversight, could also be worse.

That is the issue Atsur needs to unravel.

“We ask artists and galleries to confirm and register works with us. We subject certificates of authenticity and observe possession utilizing blockchain,” Orajiaku defined. “That manner, even when the artwork travels from Lagos to London, the data observe it.”

The startup is constructing a system the place every paintings’s possession, sale, and resale historical past is saved immutably on a decentralised ledger. Galleries can plug into this by way of Atsur’s net platform, issuing invoices, receiving funds, and embedding fee guidelines and royalties in sensible contracts. 

For artists, it means no extra being minimize out of future income. For collectors, it means confidence that what they’re shopping for is actual.

Constructing a enterprise from provenance

Atsur is just not making an attempt to reinvent how artwork is made or offered. As an alternative, it gives a discreet however highly effective infrastructure layer beneath current operations. It really works instantly with galleries, brokers, and artwork distributors—the gamers already shaping Nigeria’s artwork economic system.

“We began as a type of NFT market for bodily artworks,” Orajiaku stated. “However skilled artists have been already tied to galleries. And galleries stated they liked our verification system however didn’t wish to swap platforms or share collector information. So we pivoted to enabling them as a substitute.”

The corporate operates a business-to-business (B2B) mannequin. When a gallery or dealer indicators on, they will register artworks by means of Atsur’s platform constructed on the Polygon blockchain—with plans to construct on Linear subsequent—the place each bit is verified. This entails a sort of Know Your Shopper (KYC) test for patrons and sellers, together with authenticity and provenance verification for artworks. This helps validate the id, origin, and possession of the piece. As soon as the paintings is verified, a certificates of authenticity is issued and saved on the blockchain.

From there, the platform facilitates gross sales by issuing invoices, changing funds into stablecoin on the backend, and distributing funds by means of sensible contracts. These contracts mechanically assign and distribute commissions to everybody with a stake within the transaction—from artists to brokers to gallery house owners.

This resale infrastructure is central to Atsur’s worth. When an paintings is resold, royalties and commissions are mechanically enforced and tracked. This ensures that artists and different rights-holders proceed to learn financially every time their work adjustments palms.

Income mannequin

The corporate earns its income by means of these fee buildings. Every transaction processed on the platform features a price that helps Atsur’s operations. Extra revenue comes from issuing certificates of authenticity, a service that particular person artists or collectors can entry even when they don’t seem to be at the moment promoting the work.

Transactions are backed on Polygon because of the blockchain’s low value and excessive interoperability.

“A number of our charges are primarily by way of commissions,” Orajiaku stated. “We’re implementing resale royalties, we’re implementing all these gross sales. We’re implementing monitoring of the paintings such that if you happen to needed to resell it, you have got data to resell it.”

Whereas Atsur plans to assist direct-to-collector companies sooner or later, it initially selected the B2B route for 2 causes: it gives higher scale and extra successfully helps provenance monitoring. Second, working with galleries, the pure gatekeepers in artwork gross sales, means Atsur can onboard a number of artworks in a single go and reliably doc possession transitions.

“We’re constructing smooth infrastructure,” Orajiaku stated. “It might not look horny like fintech, however it’s important.

The drag on investor curiosity

Atsur continues to be in its early stage. The corporate pivoted to its present B2B mannequin in early 2025 and, based on Orajiaku, has onboarded a number of Nigerian galleries. Every gallery contributes dozens of artworks (between 30 and 100) to Atsur’s platform, and the startup tracks progress by means of a month-on-month improve in verified and processed artworks.

Nevertheless, investor conversations have been cautious. Orajiaku stated that the startup’s early makes an attempt to boost capital have been met with doubt.

Many buyers nonetheless see it as too dangerous and unsure. They level to a grim however legitimate concern about scale. In Africa, South Africa’s Arcual is the closest blockchain-based art-tech startup doing what Atsur is doing. Globally, {the catalogue} continues to be not spectacular; Innowise, Verisart, and Switzerland’s extra diversified 4ARTechnologies remedy one downside or the opposite with bodily artwork provenance. But, there’s no credible mannequin for scaling a distinct segment enterprise like this.

“Everybody retains saying [Africa’s art market] wants smooth infrastructure,” Orajiaku stated. “However how many individuals are keen to enter the bushes and clear the street for that infrastructure to occur? It’s uncharted, nobody has accomplished it earlier than, to allow them to’t see the trail; they value you want small chops. I say, wait till we’ve cleared the street. Then we are able to speak.”

Adopting niched-down art-tech platforms like Atsur’s in Nigeria requires deep belief, ease of use, and schooling. Orajiaku famous the problem in scaling the buy-in from gallery operators and arthouses. She prefers to go to gallery house owners and different individuals on the helm each different week.

Her principle for constructing belief is doing the issues that don’t scale. The best way Atsur’s B2B mannequin is structured means it not directly serves the buyer aspect—artists and creatives who’ve a declare to artwork items on its platform. They profit from every resale of their work.

Orajiaku will hit the street once more in November, when Lagos’ annual artwork season begins. She seems ahead to the season-long stretch of occasions, together with Artwork X Lagos’ “Resonance,” the place exhibitions and halls might be filled with artwork connoisseurs—and probably buyers—to pitch Atsur’s trigger.

An skilled Web3 software program engineer and artwork lover, Orajiaku hopes to attach with those that, like her, revere artwork and wish to be sure that the workmen behind it are paid pretty for his or her professional creations.

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