Quoth: Solving Fraudulent Art Sales

Nikusoni
4 min readJan 19, 2022

The realm of art is rapidly adopting a new format that is becoming increasingly popular, the Non-Fungible Token, more commonly known as the NFT. As mass digitization becomes a norm, we’re seeing the growth of the NFT market. Though currently centered around artwork and gaming, it is only a matter of time before this concept expands into real-world documents like contracts, leases, agreements and so on.

So what is it that is so widely appealing about the non-fungible token anyways? Well let’s start with the fact that at their core, NFTs are irreplaceable, not interchangeable. Minted on the blockchain, these digital assets are completely unique, one of a kind. Therefore, these scarce entities have increased value once in an owner’s “hands,” or better yet, wallets.

The possibilities here are endless when it comes to NFTs. Just look at how often JPEGs and PDFs are already passed through the internet. NFTs are passed along just as easily except add a whole new layer of data validation. Owners can even code royalties into their NFTs through the use of smart contract technology, allowing for that money to stack each and every time that asset is sold on another marketplace. Thanks to the blockchain, all records of sale are stored and accessible to the public eye. By making it possible to track ownership and authenticity unlike ever before, NFTs are perking the ears of artists, collectors, curators, and investors.

Sounds great right? But could it be possible to have such a level of authenticity with zero strings attached? Unfortunately, no. Though there is a great level of security when it comes to tracking ownership of NFTs, an issue of minting stolen work has been on the rise. Despite authenticity representing the heart of the non-fungible token, many marketplace platforms out there are doing the bare minimum when it comes to cross checking the work being submitted to ensure it is being submitted by the original creator. That’s right, people are finding artists’ works, minting them on different platforms, and claiming them as their own. While this format of art should be promoting autonomy for artists, sneaky folks are out there mastering the ease of reproducibility of online images.

In December, the digital artist known as Loish posted that she’d discovered 132 instances of her work being minted directly on OpenSea, despite never giving any permission to do so.

Loish concluded what she referred to as her “rant” by saying, “I want these platforms to implement a faster and more intuitive method of reporting copyright infringement, and a VERIFICATION SYSTEM so that people can’t just go uploading other people’s work.”

This is just one instance of an artist finding a slew of copyright infringements and fraudulent activity when it comes to minting artwork on platforms. With it being just the beginning of the NFT revolution, there is potential for countless issues just like Loish’s experience. So what is the solution in all of this?

Quoth has been designed for this exact reason. With a team that saw the potential of NFTs years before the boom, Quoth has been steadily developing one platform to serve as an authentication system for all NFTs in existence.

Through a carefully created Artificial Intelligence indexing system, all data pertaining to NFTs will be validated. The AI index will pull all associated transactions, timestamps, price changes and originator information, as well as Metadata and links to the data.

The data will then be processed and tagged by the AI, identifying the type of data (image, video, audio, text etc.), performing semantic image description, image-to-text, sound-to-text, video-to-text services and creating a database, ready for reverse image, video and audio searches.

With all of this information pulled and stored, the AI technology will then be able to cross check the data across all blockchains to be able to generate an originality report. A score will be produced, allowing for easier identification of intellectual property theft.

Quoth is way ahead of the NFT revolution and ready for all the developments that will come with it. First and foremost, the platform is ready to get cracking on heightening the importance of authenticity on the blockchain.

Reference: https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2021/12/20/nft-forgeries-arent-going-away/

--

--