A pitch, a 2020–2021 window, and a slogan

The notes present ArtCarry as a pitch for an online platform on which artists and collectors could trade digital artworks and confirm ownership. The product, they write, would be sold so that its value could be assessed; a Korea-friendly web service would be offered; and art would be owned and traded across physical borders. One line of the revenue model is spelled out: a work is uploaded to social media, then put through the ArtCarry service for an NFT copyright sale and for certification. Payment would be in cryptocurrency, on a blockchain, from anywhere and without regard to nationality, and the page would be shown in a language matching the visitor’s IP. Another line they name is a further return from granting use rights to partner firms and sharing revenue with them. Intermediate lines in the same list are left blank in the unique sentences, and are not filled in here.

A market size they cite, as of 2021, is $40 billion, or 47.92 trillion won, against $1 billion, or 1.198 trillion won, in 2020 — a fortyfold rise. Those figures belong to the window the notes name, and are not recast as a later official total. On a first draft of the web service, they write, the slogan “won’t someone buy my picture too?” was chosen to feel close to a broad public. A Korean design was meant to give a sense of familiarity, anyone could become a seller, a hashtag would express the image a work had gone with, and a click on the work would show the state of its ownership. A second draft, they add, would let NFTs be traded in Ethereum, and would make it simple to upload an image.

A threat from image-making tools, and what the NFT is for

The notes place the pitch against a rapid change in tools that make images. Models they name — Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, and Firefly, among others — keep being released and upgraded, and the technology, they write, is evolving fast. From the language model ChatGPT, announced in November 2022, onward, the advance in such tools, including image-making ones, is described as a shock that jumps more than a decade ahead, with a loss of jobs expected in design. In that setting, the rights of authors and designers, they write, matter a great deal. An NFT is based on a blockchain: the original author issues an NFT of the work, and when it is traded on the chain the original can be shown, and ownership can be clearly guaranteed. It is, in this telling, an important tool for protecting a maker’s income and rights, at a time when those rights are under threat from image-making systems.

The core value they set for the service is to protect the copyright of artworks they see as threatened by AI, to offer a service that fits a global IT age, and to make payment simple, without regard to nationality. Development would include turning artworks into digital form, issuing NFTs, writing smart contracts, and improving security and the user’s experience — a technology, they write, for managing digital ownership of an artwork and for trading it safely. The main technical pillars they name are trading and the safe management of ownership on a blockchain, an understanding of smart contracts and of a blockchain network, and the encryption of artwork and transaction data, together with the protection of user data.

Who would buy, who would sell, and a date left in that window

On the buying side, they write, users would purchase and own artwork NFTs through the ArtCarry platform. The marketing they sketch includes working with exclusive artists to issue limited-edition NFT works, in order to catch the attention of art collectors, and working with well-known galleries to exhibit and sell NFT works, so as to strengthen a point of contact with the art community. On the selling side, artists and designers would offer their work as NFTs through the platform; a community for artists would be built, and chances to talk and to network with collectors would be offered, so that artists would be drawn to take part, with a fair reward. The hoped-for effect, they write, is that a Korea-friendly interface would help lead the domestic NFT market, that a transparent trade could be offered between maker and buyer, and that fair dealing would be supported by NFT, blockchain, and smart-contract technology, in aid of artists whose work is under threat from AI.

The pitch is left as a student proposal, with the 2020 and 2021 market figures, and the November 2022 date for ChatGPT, in the notes’ own window, not as a later official census of either the market or the service. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. The notes’ pitch for the ArtCarry NFT platform, including the 2020 and 2021 market figures they cite and the slogan they record

Last updated: 14 November 2026