It’s official: Pak has once again made history. The influential maker has set a world record for the most money produced by a single artwork publicly auctioned by a living artist with the completion of their newest Nifty Gateway drop.
Merge took place over two days and included a single open edition NFT that could be purchased for $575. The collection was open to the public on Dec. 2 at 6:30 p.m. ET and closed on Dec. 4 at the same time. There were 28,983 collectors who spent $91,806,519 on 312,686 total “bulk” NFTs in those 48 hours.
Merge was surrounded by anticipation and fanfare, similar to Pak’s The Fungible Nifty Gateway collection from April 2021. Merge was inspired by Pak’s passion for token methods and had intricate drop mechanics that allowed collectors to accumulate “mass” during the two-day sales period.
Pak says NFT today, “Creating mechanisms is a terrific method to explore what the new media may achieve.” “As a result, I decided to create a new open edition method that will use secondary market activity to offset scarcity.”
Of course, this intense success of a drop would not have been accomplished without Nifty Gateway’s support. Reuniting with the NFT marketplace behemoth was the right decision, as the Merge decline was “all about reach,” according to Pak.
“One of the issues I faced when designing the artwork was fitting it into a single tweet.” “The second concern was broad public accessibility,” Pak says NFT. “They don’t have to learn about crypto wallets, NFTs, and this world in a few days.” “I wanted novice collectors to come in and learn while they were there.”
While some people were understandably perplexed about the collection and how it may fit within Pak’s Burn environment, the NFT community rallied in favor of the historic drop. The community aspect of Merge’s work did not go unnoticed by its enigmatic inventor. Pak tells NFT, “We did it as a large community, and it feels great.” “This is the first, but not the last,” says the narrator. Hopefully, it will be another paradigm-shifting turning point.”
Pak, who has now surpassed Jeff Koons’ record for the largest art sale by a living artist, has quickly established himself as the face of the NFT. And, as we saw NFT sales soar to $10.7 billion in the third quarter of 2021, it’s clear that, while mainstream acceptance may be a long way off, the non-fungible alliance has no intention of stopping its streak of record-breaking sales. On the other hand, nifty Gateway co-founder Duncan Cock Foster believes Merge has demonstrated that the future is already here.
In a statement, Cock Foster said, “We just witnessed the largest ever art sale by a living creator – and it didn’t happen at a traditional auction house, it happened at a web3 platform.” “I’d like to express my heartfelt thanks to Pak, who has just established himself as a visionary and one of the greatest artists.” We’re thrilled to be able to support them and assist them in achieving their goals.”
Pak simply said, “We are here,” when asked what they thought about the ramifications of a sale of this magnitude taking place on a web3 platform.
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