Ephimera is the world’s first marketplace focused on the exchange of tokenized photography and video art. Built on the Ethereum blockchain, it allows creators to publish their work as unique, non-fungible tokens and offer these for auction to collectors. Ephimera is a global, barrier-free home for the appreciation, creation and collection of tokenized fine photography and media art.
Artwork featured and exchanged are Ephemeral in nature – containing or consisting of captured moments in time. These may include photographs, collages which implement photographic elements, creations of video art or a 3D shape incorporating a number of photos. Ephimera lays the foundation for experimentation and enjoyment around all kinds of lens art.
No. All artworks published on Ephimera are unique, 1-of-1 pieces.
For all primary sales Ephimera applies a 10% platform fee, deducted from the artwork’s final price. For secondary sales (where a collector resells a piece they have purchased in the past) there is a 5% platform fee, and a further 10% is assigned as a royalty to the art’s original creator.
For any queries you can drop a line in the official Ephimera discord channel, send us a Tweet @Ephimera_com, or email us at contact@ephimera.com. In any of these cases we will respond as soon as possible. We also highly value feedback from collectors, artists, galleries or any interested parties. Send any comments or suggestions you might have to us via the aforementioned channels, and help us shape the future of Ephimera.
Tokenized artworks are unique artistic creations signed and attached by the artist to tokens on a public blockchain. This allows for the ownership and history of these non-fungible tokens to be tracked and verified, and for ownership of the art to be transferred from one individual or group to another. As many creators will attest, digital rarity or scarcity on the internet is very difficult to achieve given the ease with which digital media can be duplicated and distributed. Blockchains address this by storing a fully verifiable ownership history of a token and its associated media. By keeping the token in your digital wallet, you can prove your ownership of a unique digital creation, or resell it as you see fit.
Tokenizing an artwork bestows a number of advantages beyond proveable ownership. It allows for full transparency of provenance, as the entire transactional history of the token is visible for all to see. Timestamps, visible in any Ethereum block explorer, will show when a token was created, as well as when it has been sold and transferred. Metadata stored on the token provides further detail on the creating artist and the platform on which it was minted. The Ephimera marketplace contract also enables secondary sales royalties to be collected by the original artist any time their work is resold. This means that artists benefit from the appreciation of their work, long after they have sold the piece at auction. More than anything else, tokenized art facilitates a truly global marketplace and community. Photographers and video artists from anywhere in the world can tokenize and offer their work for auction in a matter of minutes, and collectors from anywhere in the world can bid on and purchase art with just their crypto wallet. This removes intermediaries from the process, and connects people all over the globe in their shared appreciation and enjoyment of art.
Non-fungible tokens, sometimes also referred to as distinguishable assets, are cryptographic tokens representing something unique and as the name suggests, are not mutually interchangeable. There are a number of NFT standards based on public blockchains, and some blockchains (Ethereum in particular) facilitate a number of standards for NFTs with different characteristics - batch minting, semi-fungibility, etc. Unlike currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, NFTs allow users to peg something digital or physical to a token and have its ownership represented on the blockchain. They can then be used to track provenance in an immutable and tamper-proof distributed ledger.
At present all Ephimera tokens are based on the Ethereum blockchain’s ERC-721 token standard. This is the most commonly used standard for blockchain-based collectables with a broad infrastructure of supporting tools, wallets and secondary markets, and it is the standard most collectors and creators of crypto art will be familiar with.
Ethereum is a digital asset or cryptocurrency, but it is also capable of facilitating smart contracts and decentralized applications - the tools Ephimera artists use to tokenize artworks and submit them for auction. Ethereum has been described as a ‘world computer’, as it distributes computational tasks among a network of nodes and validators located all over the globe. Artworks on Ephimera are all purchased and sold using the Ethereum currency.
As the name suggests, an Ethereum wallet allows a user to store their Ethereum, but it also allows them to store a range of other assets like ERC-20 tokens or ERC-721 tokens, the NFT standard Ephimera tokens are based on. After you have purchased or created an artwork, the resulting token will be kept in your Ethereum wallet.
Your Ethereum address is a string of 42 characters associated with your Ethereum wallet. This address can be made public, and is used when you want to receive Ether or another Ethereum-based token. On Ephimera, the address you use to bid for an artwork will be the address the token is sent to if the owner accepts your bid. Your wallet will also be used to sign in to your profile, where your collected or created art will be visible.
Metamask is a browser plugin that allows users to make Ethereum transactions and interact with decentralized applications on websites. When Metamask is installed and a user submits a bid on Ephimera, they will be prompted to sign this transaction by the Metamask plugin and if they have sufficient funds the bid will be placed successfully. Purchasing an artwork with a listing price occurs much the same way. Metamask is also called when signing in to Ephimera and for artists when they are publishing an artwork. Metamask can be downloaded from the developer’s website here: https://metamask.io/. As well as creating or importing existing Ethereum wallets, Metamask allows users to connect a hardware wallet, to interact with smart contracts and to initiate transactions directly from their browser while keeping their tokens safe.
All operations on Ethereum, whether that be a standard transaction or creating a brand new NFT, require a gas fee. This fee compensates the miners who confirmed the transaction, and varies depending on the current volume on the network and how quickly you want your transaction to go through. Different actions will cost more in gas, depending on the complexity involved. As an example, publishing an artwork as a unique token will cost more in gas fees than placing a bid or sending an already existing token.
To begin your Ephimera collection you will need a Web3 wallet like Metamask and some Ether to bid on your first artwork. With those in hand, have a look at the Marketplace and see if any artwork takes your fancy. When one does, you can enter a bid you believe is fair, sign the associated Metamask transaction and wait to see if you are successful. Or for the impatient, if you see an artwork with a listing price you can buy it instantly.
Congratulations! Just like purchasing a physical artwork, you can exhibit this work online or in the real world, you can resell it or hold it in hopes of its value appreciating, you can even show it off on prints or clothing (for your own personal use - the commercial copyright still rests with the artist!). Many artists and collectors also display their prized digital possessions in decentralized AR games like CryptoVoxels. You own it, what you do with it is up to you!
Currently all Ephimera auctions are conducted with Ethereum (ETH), although we are exploring other methods of payment. Watch this space.
Artist applications are currently closed, as our curatorial team reviews the large influx of applications received in the most recent application round. If you are interested in applying in the future, please follow us on Twitter or join our Discord where we will announce the next round of applications. If you have already applied, please be assured that your submission will be reviewed and, if accepted, you will receive an email confirming you as an artist on the platform. Due to the sheer volume of applications received we are unable to respond to all applicants, and we cannot respond to queries about the status of any individual application.
Kudos, welcome aboard! You can now tokenize your artworks and list them for auction. You can also add collaborators if appropriate – these collaborators will receive a portion of any successful bids and will not have to register independently as an artist. You can also specify the ratio of revenue to be split among you and your fellow collaborators – this will be the same ratio in which any secondary royalties are split.
Yes, collectors are likely to appreciate the highest possible resolution for their collected artworks.
Once you have successfully sold an artwork on Ephimera, you will generate secondary sale revenue any time that artwork is resold. For each resale of your art on the platform you will be awarded 10% of the winning bid. This model rewards artists for their work well into the future, much like royalties in the traditional arts & entertainment industry.
When publishing an artwork you will see an option to include a Vision Board consisting of up to five images. These images allow you to provide further context to your art; whether that be a zoomed-in area on the artwork itself, a picture of your workshop or environment, or simply something which inspired your work. These images will be stored alongside the artwork itself on IPFS, but the use of the Vision Board is completely optional.
As in the traditional art and photography market, many artists like to create a series of artworks around a theme or motif, or in a similar style or composition. If you are publishing an artwork which fits into a larger series, you can include the name of the series in the artwork page and the token. The first time you publish an artwork that will form part of a series, simply type the name of the series into the Series box and hit Enter/Return. Any time you add to that series just select the series name from the drop down box, and the new addition will similarly be shown as part of that series.
In Ephimera, Galleries can list the work of the artists they represent for auction in much the same way an individual artist can list their own work for auction. Galleries will have to prove they do indeed represent the artists they claim to, but once they have done so they are free to open that artist’s work to the world of tokenized art. This gives artists without experience in tokenized assets the ability to participate in the market, and opens the door for specialized galleries focusing on one particular genre or type of art. Galleries can represent any number of artists, and an artist can be represented by more than one gallery.
Many artists, even digital artists, are not familiar with the process of tokenizing art or crypto art in general. Galleries can help artists reach new markets by handling the tokenization and auction of their associated artists’ work. It is up to the artist and gallery to decide the ratio of any revenue split, and this can be done directly (the gallery lists the artist’s Ethereum address as a collaborator when beginning an auction) or indirectly, where the gallery receives 100% of the bid and settles with the artist externally, through another channel. Even crypto-native artists can benefit from Galleries on Ephimera. If an artist believes their work fits the theme or philosophy of a particular Gallery, they are free to connect and publish a selection of their work with that Gallery.