A Deep Dive into Portion.io ($PRT) a Decentralized Luxury NFT Marketplace
Introduction — Market and Target Audience
Portion has an ambitious business model concept when it comes to the world of NFTs. Its main goal is to bridge the gap between two striving economic systems. For one you have the new and much talked about NFT projects popping up everywhere and on the other side you have the growing digitalization of the auction industry. In order to bridge the gap, Portion describes itself as “the premier online marketplace connecting artists and collectors through blockchain technology”. So far there hasn’t been any real differentiation of other NFT platforms, but if you look closer they have a distinct target audience, namely luxury art collectors and artists bidding and trading on a global Marketplace. An audience that pushed Christies’ yearly revenue beyond the $4 Billion Dollar mark, while also pushing the evaluation of the art and collectibles economy to about $2,7 Trillion in Assets and increasing online sales by 262% racking up over $300 million in the year of 2020.
By leveraging the future of blockchain technology, which revolutionizes payment and security processes around the world, Portion is looking to revolutionize the old and antiquated systems on which auction houses function. In short, technological implementations such as smart contracts, seem to be an obvious and necessary business opportunity. This becomes utterly clear when looking at the staggering amount of industry fraud, which is named as the second biggest unregulated industry after drugs. Portion’s blockchain is able to counter these problems with technology that creates immutable records of authenticity, mitigating risk of fraud and counterfeits that could enter the traditional market. Stemming from this lack of transparency and missing records, the luxury auction and collectibles market is ripe for a much needed remodel. Portion’s goal is to do just that.
The Project
Portion positions itself as a global marketplace, giving artists the ability to offer and sell their art pieces, while collectors are able to buy, trade, as well as store their prized possessions. Furthermore, Portion also expands on the traditional NFT market by anchoring in the auction industry. Buyers can either have physical goods delivered to themselves, Portion’s storage facility or any other preferred storage partner. By leveraging these options, Portion is not only looking for digital art, but instead wants to build on the traditional market. This advanced model allows buyers to hold the right of possession on a good without worrying about maintaining the item’s condition. Normally if rare and luxury items are sold, there are exhaustive processes, which are often rendered unnecessary by using Portion’s technology. Buyers can simply monitor the market and relist the right of ownership of assets at any given time.
Building on the blockchain technology, Portion allows certificates of authenticity to bundle images and smart-tags with information from artists, galleries, manufacturers, and authorized retailers. By doing so, Portion doesn’t only solve the problem of ownership and commerce, it also sets out to lower the barriers, preventing artists and collectors from entering this art market entirely. In the traditional art market, you have to be well connected in the scene in order to get the chance to take part in high-end auctions. The tokenized marketplace democratizes these seemingly enigmatic worlds by utilizing the built-in technology of the platform to eliminate the existing gatekeepers, such as art brokers, galleries and auction houses itself. This completely removes their wielding power when it comes to price discovery and transactions. Furthermore, the decentralization of the market also eliminates the immense sales commissions that often go as high as 50% and which are being taken out of an artist’s proceeds. Portion aims to give creators direct access to collectors without all the bloated fees and intermediaries.
Technology
The Portion platform will be utilizing its own token called “PRT”. Deeply integrated into the ecosystem, the token will be used for participating in auctions and services such as Liquidity Mining and Loans. Moreover, token holders will also gain voting rights for new features, marketplace curation and more, thus incentivizing people to actively participate in the project.
The technology itself comes down to passing the blockchain certificate from entity to entity by using Portion’s smart contract ecosystem.Interlinking the physical goods to the blockchain certificate can be achieved through fraud-resistant holographic tags called “ports”. Ports are uniquely developed by Portion and can be scanned with a smartphone through either NFC or QR code. The fast and easy access allows people to read information such as owner’s public keys, sale history, provenance, associated photo/files and additional crucial data.
It is Envisioned that Portion users may collateralize authentic art and collectibles to receive secured B2B or DeFi-loans. Furthermore, Portion Tokens will be awarded to users based only on their activity, such as the creation of new NFTs that currently get awarded 500 PRT each.
Each user on Portion interacts with the platform via their own secured Ethereum third-party wallet, so no passwords or unencrypted private keys are stored by Portion.
Besides implementing this ecosystem to its own plattform, Portion will also license its blockchain technology infrastructure to businesses in the art, collectibles and luxury industries, further expanding the field use-cases.
Team
The Portion Team consists of 20 contributors and advisors, ranging from (previously) high-positioned members of Christies, Sotheby, HighSnobiety, JPMorgan Chase, Sirin Labs and many more (art and technology) institutions. So it’s safe to say that all of the team members have vast experience in the blockchain space as well as in the art industry. Furthermore, by actively recruiting fashion and technology experts and forming powerful partnerships with well-known brands and artists, the team is more than capable of building the global luxury marketplace as they envisioned from the start. Be sure to check out their current partners listed in the graphic below.
You can follow them on Telegram, Discord and Twitter to keep up to date with all things relating to Portion.
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