The digital realm, despite its ubiquity, faces a significant challenge: preserving its cultural artifacts for future generations. The temporary quality of digital information requires creative methods, and blockchain technology is quickly proving itself as an exciting answer. Preservation is one of three distinct but interrelated categories of blockchain application in the arts. It wields decentralization and encryption technology in defense of our digital culture, protecting it for the next century.

Indeed, archivists have been saying for years that more copies are better, summarized in our mantra “lots of copies special things safe.” The rule of thumb for preservation-grade storage is ‘3 copies, in 3 locations. Paired with blockchain’s built-in distributed nature, this principle provides an excellent framework for data replication and security.

The NFT boom of 2020 served as a watershed moment, highlighting both the potential and the vulnerabilities of digital art. Artists and institutions continue to struggle with how best to preserve their creative assets in perpetuity. Blockchain-backed, decentralized storage provides a remedy by returning the value of their data to creators while guaranteeing its future. Many disciplines within the museum will need to work together and this is a collaborative effort that touches on curatorial, registrar, collections, and conservation.

Digital art preservation is a multifaceted process. Conservation teams manage important documentation, such as identity and iteration reports, treatment plans and condition assessments. Our mission is to preserve born-digital artwork so that it can be experienced as originally intended and innovatively at least 100 years from now.

An exciting new generation of artists and institutions have recently started working at the edges of Preservation. One such initiative is TRANSFER, an experimental media art space founded by Kelani Nichole, that has become a flagship for this movement. TRANSFER is focused on preservation. Other artists are creating physical immersive installations of net art, video games, virtual worlds, and generative art.

Along with engagement and collecting, preservation is one of the three major areas where blockchain technology meets with the arts. Curatorial departments drive acquisitions through the door. Yet, the distinctive format of NFTs necessitates an earlier and more robust engagement with the institution’s legal function, particularly regarding ownership and rights management.

Blockchain's potential to revolutionize digital art preservation lies in its core components: decentralization and encryption. Decentralization secures your data by spreading it across a consensus-controlled network of independent nodes. By doing this, it does not get held in one, easily attacked place. By automating and simplifying the creation of this redundancy across multiple geographies, data loss or corruption becomes much less likely. Encryption provides additional protection to the artwork, securing its integrity and authenticity as well.

The technology of blockchain presents exciting possibilities for collaborative data stewardship. Multiple institutions can participate in a shared preservation network, pooling resources and expertise to ensure the long-term survival of digital art. This unique collaborative process is essential to net art, video games, and virtual worlds. Each of these domains often rely on complex software and hardware ecosystems.

TRANSFER — with Kelani Nichole at the helm, and full of amazing artists — is already doing this work, and deeply probing these potentials. The creative space works with artists to produce large-scale, immersive digital art experiences. Simultaneously, it develops pioneering strategies for conservation of these artworks. These initiatives are examples of practical, impactful real-world application of blockchain technology to help preserve and protect our digital culture.

The daunting issue of digital art preservation can’t be met with the same old mentality. Time-based media art concerns Traditional modes of archiving, though indispensable, often fall short when confronted with the distinct preservation requirements of born-digital artwork. Blockchain provides a unique opportunity to do so, one that is rooted in decentralization, collaboration, and long-term sustainability.

The idea that “lots of copies save you from having nothing” is central to this model. Because blockchain stores copies of data across a network of distributed nodes, even if some nodes go offline, the digital artwork is preserved and accessible. This resilience to digital preservation is especially vital amid technological obsolescence, data corruption, and other dangers to digital preservation.

The NFT boom of 2020 served to launch digital art into the mainstream. It served to expose a major deficit in robust preservation efforts. In reality, the majority of NFTs are just links to images or other files hosted on centralized servers which can be deleted or changed. Blockchain-backed storage is a secure, fast and reliable solution. It ensures that our artwork, at its original best, will be available to future generations.

Conservation is essential in this effort. And as custodians of the artist’s vision, conservators have the key role of documenting the artwork’s artistic provenance, condition, and technical specifications. The failure to account for these nuances can lead to the permanent loss of the work through improper display, migration, or restoration throughout the years.

The intention behind digital art preservation isn’t just to make a copy of the artwork. It is to make sure that the artwork continues to be accessible and meaningful in years to come. This only happens when one has a thorough understanding of the artwork’s context, its technical needs and its cultural importance.

Through preservation, we have a chance to uplift artists and creators. With blockchain-backed storage, artists can fully own and control every aspect of their work. Only then can they ensure that they enjoy the fruits of their work’s lasting worth. This is a dramatic departure from existing practice. In previous generations, artists often relinquished ownership of their work to galleries, museums, or other institutional players.

Using blockchain technology to integrate the digital art world and the physical one is still a nascent endeavor. The potential benefits are clear. By embracing decentralization, collaboration, and long-term sustainability, the art world can ensure that digital culture is preserved for future generations.

Curatorial practices are changing too, in large part due to the impact of NFTs and blockchain-based art. Curators are still exploring the legal and technical details of these artworks. So they are on the front end, actively making sure things are really well documented, authenticated, and preserved. This approach necessitates an interdisciplinary, collaborative process. Conservators don’t work in a bubble, registrars aren’t experts on their own.

The intersection of blockchain and the arts goes far beyond preservation. Engagement, the third major category, includes innovative ways that artists can create and audiences can experience art through blockchain technology. Collecting, the third category, involves how blockchain is being used to create and manage collections of digital art.

As the digital landscape becomes increasingly complex, the call for strong, effective preservation strategies will prove even more urgent. Blockchain technology presents an exciting answer, delivering a decentralized, secure, and sustainable infrastructure to protect our digital culture.