1. The Problem

1.1 The Gallery System's Structural Failure

The traditional art market concentrates in three cities: New York, London, and Hong Kong account for over 80% of global art sales. This geographic concentration creates structural barriers:

• Economic Gatekeeping: Gallery representation requires existing wealth, connections, and geographic privilege

• Speculation Dominance: Artworks become financial instruments; aesthetic value subordinates to market performance

• Circulation Constraints: Physical logistics—shipping, insurance, crating—limit where art can travel

• Artist Precarity: Even represented artists earn median incomes below subsistence; the majority earn nothing from their practice

The result: art concentrates in wealthy enclaves while 95% of humanity is excluded from contemporary cultural experience.

1.2 The NFT Experiment's Failure

The 2021-2022 NFT phenomenon demonstrated blockchain's potential for provenance and artist payment. It failed because:

• Financialization Replaced Function: Artworks became speculative assets traded for profit

• No Physical Connection: Digital-only focus ignored the embodied experience of art

• Extraction Over Sustainability: Platform fees extracted value without building lasting infrastructure

• Speculation Architecture: Underlying token standards assumed trading as default behavior

NFTs proved blockchain could serve art. They proved nothing about whether it should under speculative conditions.

1.3 The Infrastructure Gap

What's needed is neither galleries nor NFT marketplaces but permanent infrastructure for art to circulate:

• Independent of institutional gatekeepers

• Resistant to speculative capture

• Accessible regardless of geography or wealth

• Sustainable for artists economically

• Designed for cultural permanence, not platform lifecycles