Artsted: digital provenance for genuine art
Artsted.com is a marketplace for contemporary art. Every work sold through Artsted carries a certificate of authenticity backed by ProperTrust: the artist is verified, the work is registered, the certificate is anchored on-chain, and the Artsted sticker on the piece links the physical object to its record. Provided and piloted by Artsted LLC.
The problem
Certificates of authenticity are the weakest link in the art trade: a printed sheet, a signature, no way to check it years later, and nothing that follows the work when it changes hands. Forged certificates, "attributed to" labels and lost provenance cost artists their reputation and buyers their money.
What Artsted needed
- Proof that the artist who signs the certificate is who they claim to be
- A certificate that cannot be copied onto another work
- A provenance that survives resale, a change of gallery, or Artsted itself
- A check any buyer, auction house or insurer can run from the work alone
How ProperTrust certifies a work
Verified artist
The artist holds a ProperTrust account at identity level Qualified or higher: email, payment card and government ID checked. Their public trust profile shows the badges and the number of certified works.
Registered work
Title, year, medium, dimensions, edition and reference photographs are deposited; the deposit is hashed and anchored in Bitcoin. The work exists in the record before it leaves the studio.
Signed certificate
The certificate of authenticity is an agreement between artist and Artsted, signed clause by clause. The artist attests authorship; Artsted attests the sale. Both receive an edition.
Sticker on the work
The Artsted sticker carries the QR code and the record code. It is applied to the stretcher, the frame or the base. Scanning it opens the verification page: artist, work, certificate status, ownership history.
Provenance on-chain
Each sale adds a transfer to the record: seller, buyer, date, all hashed and anchored. The buyer becomes the holder of the certificate edition. Resales continue the chain; gaps are visible.
Anyone can check
Auction houses, insurers, customs and private buyers scan the sticker or enter the code. No Artsted account, no ProperTrust account: existence, integrity and the public part of the provenance are shown; the certificate itself opens with the owner's PIN.
What the record contains
- Artist identity level and public profile at the time of certification
- Work description, edition number and reference photographs (hashed)
- Certificate wording, signed clause by clause, with timestamps
- Chain of transfers with dates; buyer identities visible to the parties, hashed for the public
- Bitcoin anchors for the deposit, the certificate bundle and each transfer
What it prevents
- A certificate moved to a different work: the record names the work and the photographs are hashed
- A forged artist signature: the certificate is signed from a verified account, not on paper
- A lost provenance: the chain of transfers lives in the record, not in a folder
- A duplicate sticker: a second scan of the same code from a second location raises an alert
Results from the pilot
Artsted LLC provided the use case and runs the pilot on its platform. The ProperTrust flow replaces paper certificates for new sales; existing works are registered retroactively by the artist with the original sale documented as the first transfer. Buyers receive their certificate edition by email; the sticker is applied before shipping.
Figures from the pilot are published once the first cohort of works has been resold at least once, which is when the provenance chain proves its value.
For galleries, artists and marketplaces
The Artsted flow is available to other galleries and marketplaces through the ProperTrust API and library templates: certificate wording, sticker layout and transfer records are reusable.
Request beta access artsted.com