▲ Daedong Foundation / CEO Sangsu Im

One thing the pandemic has brought a change to the exhibition industry is the craze on NFT (Non-Fungible Token). Seemingly starting from art works, NFT seems to expand its scope to music and sports. It is estimated that about 30 trillion won ($25 billion) NFT trade were made last year globally. Naturally, NFT related companies and businesses are sprouting one by one with better techniques and services. 

NFT is a virtual token that proves the owner of a digital asset such as an art work which is non-copiable. If 10,000 won bank notes are changeable because they have the same value, NFT has different price because each token has different value. 

The first tweet of Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, was sold at $2.9 million at a NFT auction last year. The US rock band Kings of Leon sold its new album in 2021 on NFT and it swept $2 million within 2 weeks. The media seems to be hurrying covering the news with global craze on NFT with big tech companies such as Facebook and Microsoft are jumping into this new field of cash cow. 

Art works have a number of drawbacks: people have to visit the gallery, the art works can be damaged or forged, and they are exclusive properties of a few people. Digitalized art works, on the other hand, do not require a visit to the gallery from this place to another, free of damages or forgeries, and can be bought by anyone. 

"The ides of Daedong Foundation" says its CEO Sangsu Im "is to combine advantages of both offline art works and digital art works through traditional selling, exclusive purchase, auction and open market as well as made-to-order services." 

Introducing next month by Daedong Foundation is 'Art Online' in South Korea, China, Malaysia and Dubai through joint corporations. Art Online will be dealing art works, antiques, figures, cartoons and many more as NFT. The platform of Art Online is designed and developed by Creativehill CEO Chunwoon Im suggesting a new paradigm to existing NFT platforms. Art Online is both offline-online compatible based on Solana platform instead of Ethereum.  

Daedong Foundation joined hands with Humanaidpost to sell art works created by disabled artists as NFT. Humanaidpost ran a disabled Korean artist exhibition at the ACEP 2020 and another disabled artist exhibition titled 'Drawing Islands'. The collaboration between the two parties aims to help artists with developmental disabilities and to promote interest of people in them. 

Many people are confidently predicting that the age of metaverse is nigh. Metaverse is a step ahead version of VR where trade on many things are made in virtual spaces. 

"In the coming age of metaverse, everybody can be an artist and everybody can buy an art work. Daedong Foundation and Art Online will play a meaningful role on this" says Im. <PowerKorea>