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"Femme, oiseau" by Joan Miro hangs during a preview of the Impressionist and Modern Art fall sales at Sotheby's in New York on Oct. 30, 2009. 

"Femme, oiseau" by Joan Miro hangs during a preview of the Impressionist and Modern Art fall sales at Sotheby's in New York on Oct. 30, 2009. 

Photographer: Daniel Acker
Technology

Startup Codex Brings Blockchain to Art With Backing From Pantera

Verifying authenticity or provenance is one of the art industry’s biggest challenges. Blockchain can help.
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Blockchain is a potentially revolutionary technology for all sorts of industries, from finance to food safety, social media and retail. A startup plans to use it in the notoriously opaque world of fine art to verify authenticity.

Codex has developed a decentralized database for the market for art and collectibles like antique cars and jewelry. This protocol would help bring transparency to one of the most valuable aspects of any item in that category: its provenance. Provenance is the history of ownership of a work. Proving that pedigree is currently a painstaking and long process often done by hand, sifting through paper documents and receipts, and is often inconclusive.