A pioneering NFT platform dedicated to original crypto art
Since its launch in 2018, digital art Platform SuperRare is at the forefront of the CryptoArt market. Built on the Ethereum blockchain, the curated marketplace was created with the purpose of empowering the next generation of artists through technology, allowing artists and collectors around the world to buy his $280 million worth of singles. has helped sell editions of NFT art So far. Founded by John Crane, Charles Crane, and Jonathan Perkins, the platform has launched multiple high-profile NFT drops over the years. Krista Kim’s Mars Housesurpassed $500,000 in the platform’s first primary sales last March. His DΞSTINATION HΞXAGONIA by his Dutch DJ Don Diablo sold for $1,259,280 last year, making it his first primary sale to surpass $1 million.
In 2021, SuperRare transitioned to a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) by introducing $RARE. This is a curation token that allows that community to have a voice and ultimately control the platform. “The idea is that the art market will be owned by the people who make use of it, the artists and the collectors. Jonathan Perkins, co-founder and CPO of SuperRare Labs, told designboom: On November 3, 2022, the platform also announced the launch of a revolutionary new collection pass, RarePass. This is a revolutionary new collecting pass that offers the owner a CryptoArt collecting experience his year, with monthly drops from top SuperRare artists.The first pass will be auctioned on November 15th via SuperRare, with the Dutch auction price of the remaining RarePasses set to a dedicated Rarepass official website.
“Our vision is the fusion of the online creative economy and the art market.” Perkins explains. “We see a future where there are millions of artists and billions of art collectors, and literally anyone with an internet connection and a smartphone can become a collector.” To learn more about SuperRare and the future of art collections, read the full interview below.
Matt Kane, CRYPTOART MONETIZATION GENERATION, 2022 | All images courtesy of SuperRare
Interview with SUPERARE co-founder Jonathan Perkins
designboom (DB): What is Super Rare?
Jonathan Perkins (JP): SuperRare is a digital art platform built on Ethereum. When we launched in 2018, we were the first place an artist could cast their work as his NFT. There were a few other things going on in his early NFTs, but we were the first platform focused on the art market. Over the past five years, we have focused on art and culture. We believe that a key innovation of NFT is to enable the digitization of collection. From the beginning, we have built a very active community of digital artists around the world, making our work available to collectors digitally for the first time. We entered the market very quickly. During the first few years, the focus was on helping develop the collector market. Because not many people collected digital art. Digital art was kind of a new concept in 2018. Over the past two years, there has been this huge explosion and awareness of NFTs that has really allowed us to grow and continue to reinvest in our community.
Last summer, we announced that in 2021, SupeRare will become a DAO. This is his Web3 native way of becoming a user controlled and user owned platform. We launched $RARE, SuperRare’s curation token. This is what allows the artist and collector community to have a say and ultimately control the platform. They have a say in things like curation, fees, and royalty structures on their platform. It’s like a decentralized cooperative, or corporate board. The idea is that the art market is owned by the people who use it, the artists and the collectors.
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DB: Can anyone join the platform, or does it have to be a verified group, such as a specific artist or a collector with a certain amount of work?
EN: Anyone can hold some $RARE tokens and there are several ways to participate. One really primary way to get involved is by choosing Spaces, a community-chosen sub-gallery of SupeRare. We have tried to make it fun, but the governance of many cryptocurrencies has been very dry, boring and very financial. I created a kind of social game called Space Race. In this game, galleries submit proposals, presenting what kind of community to build on SuperRare, what kind of art to curate, and how they connect. The community then votes for the top favorites from this cohort.
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DB: It also works like a social network.
EN: Absolutely.
DB: How did you decide to create a social network dedicated to crypto art instead of using an existing social network?
EN: We believe that art, creativity, and especially art collecting, is inherently social. If there’s one thing social media has taught us, it’s that people love sharing their excitement, interacting online, and commenting. From the very early days of SuperRare, one of the first features we built was user profiles you could follow. I used the social media site pattern because, like I said, I believe art collecting should be social. One of the very interesting things about collecting NFT art, unlike physical art, is that anyone can see your collection at any time. There is an early misconception that NFTs were supposed to be created so that only the owner could see the art. In the early days, we had to explain this a million times. People said, oh, it’s a cipher, you’re locking it, you’re hiding art in your basement. If you own an NFT, everyone in the world can see your art, and everyone in the world can see that you own it. This is very powerful.
Think about media on the Internet. For example, what’s the most watched video on YouTube?It’s probably his Baby Shark Dance with over 11 billion views which is very rare. Having something that everyone in the world has seen is a very rare occurrence and worth it. We apply the physics of the all open and visible internet to art collecting , which is inherently social.
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DB: How do you choose your featured artists? Can anyone sell their work on SuperRare or is there a selection process? What do you look for in featured artists?
EN: The question of who could be an artist on the platform quickly came up in the early days. At the time, we were just the three of him writing code at his coffee shop in New York. If they look like real artists, we accept them. Over the past few years, we have maintained this through our curation team reviewing artist submissions. We’re trying to be pretty exclusive about it because there’s more demand from artists than from collectors and it’s always been, 100,000 artists and he said the platform with 1,000 collectors is I didn’t want to make it.
But this is all evolving, and as I said earlier, the idea of DAO is that control of SuperRare will eventually be released by us, the founding team. Unlike the Apple App Store, which is very tightly controlled by the corporation, we are creating a system with many curators. We’re essentially reinventing ourselves into a more decentralized way, with dozens of different curators. You can ask who this museum is curating or who this journalist is curating. About 18 curators have already worked on his SupeRare through the previously mentioned Space Race selection process. This includes well-known traditional art institutions, new crypto-native art institutions, collectors, artists and collectives, and is of increasing interest. From more famous brands. The idea is that these curators are encouraged to join the network and help artists get involved and sell their work.
Krista Kim, House on Mars, 2021 | Learn more about Design Boom
DB: What has changed with Ethereum moving to Proof of Stake? How do you think this will affect the artist community, and how will it affect platforms like yours? Do you think that?
EN: The Ethereum community is very unique. Since its initial launch in 2015, there has been a very strong desire to evolve the platform into a more sustainable technology. His first seven years were a time when everyone knew this was very ideal. It used the same consensus mechanism as the incredibly power-hungry Bitcoin, emitting varying degrees of carbon emissions depending on where in the world the power was being consumed. It’s a situation we all desperately want to escape.
Simply put, a platform without a native level of technical understanding was certainly a problem for those of us building a very public, very social platform. Perhaps right or wrong from other people who heard the facts about the dolphins. In the meantime, we have always maintained the mindset of recognizing that this evolution is happening and that this is a temporary situation. and the plan has worked out very well so far. In fact, Ethereum uses almost 99.5% less power than it used to, and we are currently seeing artists waiting to get started on the sidelines, whether for their own beliefs or recognition from their fans. One is that the technology worked and we got there without any problems. Two, it’s really exciting to see this community evolve into a cleaner future.
