“It simply made sense to connect digital art to digital gold”
An interview with Masha McConaghy, co-founder, ascribe.io, originally published on MORROW collective medium page
In 2013, Masha McConaghy, Trent McConaghy and Bruce Pon founded ascribe, a protocol, backend, and app for blockchain-secured digital art. It was built on Bitcoin and it grew to 13,500 users with 31,900 registered works. However, it has been dormant since 2018.
Since then, the team has gone on to co-found Ocean Protocol, a blockchain startup focused on bringing data and AI together.
MORROW collective, spoke to Masha, who, other than her work in blockchain, is a well established contemporary art curator. She has a PhD in Arts from Pantheon-Sorbonne University, Paris, and a Museology Degree from Louvre School, Paris. In addition to organizing exhibitions in Paris, Berlin, Vancouver, she has assisted curators at Le Louvre, and directed a commercial gallery in Vancouver.
Anna Seaman: Can you take us back to the thinking behind ascribe? As a contemporary art curator, you identified this problem of not being able to give value to digital art and the blockchain changed that…
Masha McConaghy: Yes, the nature of a digital file is to be free. At the time, the only solutions on the market involved trapping the file but inherently, a piece of digital art is a file that can be copied and replicated very easily, so, how do we connect that to value? Artists like to share their work, some even price them based on how many Youtube viewers they have. How do you capture the value? It just made sense to connect the digital art to digital gold, which was Bitcoin at the time. This made sense to us, that’s how we started.
AS: Do you feel now that you were very early to this concept and, in a sense, visionary, at that time?
MM: No, it just made sense to us. We knew we were early; it was a new idea, even Bitcoin was new but we had hope for the technology and we saw its power. Indeed, the idea of creating value to something ephemeral is very powerful. This technology helps to create this bond between the artist and the artwork, to prove authenticity, and also to have clear provenance which is extremely important in the art world. Collectors, especially in contemporary art, want to have assurance that they have authentic artwork and that they have clean provenance into the future as well. Once you have clean provenance you have the secondary market.
AS:: Were you excited about this technology?
MM: Yes, extremely excited, because it is empowering to artists.
AS: Who were the artists using it?
MM: Privacy is very important to us; we wanted ascribe to be a simple tool, not a marketplace. Therefore, we did not have visibility of who was using it. We only knew if people contacted us or if we contacted specific artists. We did see from the Twitter feed, that it was used not only by artists. There were people using it for 3D printing; writers; graphic designers; jewelry designers, and architects. That’s when we realized it is useful for different types of IP. It was a licensing platform where you could transfer ownership, give to consignment to a gallery or loan for the certain exhibition. The licenses were time stamped on a blockchain. It was very interesting for us to see how people would use it.
AS: What is the difference between what you were doing then and NFTs?
MM: It really depends how one defines NFTs. If one considers NFTs to be blockchain-secured digital art, then ascribe was doing NFTs. Or if one defines NFTs as a specific protocol specification like ERC721, then ascribe’s protocol can be seen as a precursor to it. There are other definitions too. The ideal NFT stores everything on chain: the work itself, metadata, and provenance of ownership. Such an ideal wasn’t feasible on Bitcoin in 2013 or even with Ethereum ERC721s in 2017. However in 2013 we could solve the core of the artists’ challenge: to secure the digital art by using hashes of the data and leveraging Bitcoin’s built-in provenance.
AS: What did you think about the art that was being minted on ascribe?
MM: In general I just love art. So, back then, as now, for me, it was art first and technology second. Artists like Jonathan [Monaghan], Harm [Van Den Dorpel] and Constant [Dullaart] have always integrated technology into their art, and there are others who question the technology and play with it to reflect upon its power. I love conceptual art that makes you think and initiates conversation; that was something that characterized the artists minting on ascribe at the time.
AS: Looking back 10 years, how do you feel about ascribe’s role?
MM: I am happy that the world caught up to our vision. When we started, it was challenging to explain it to artists and galleries, because we’d have to explain Bitcoin, blockchain, and more. It is easier now as everyone in the art world kind of knows about blockchain and even NFTs. It’s exciting to see the technology be taken more seriously!
Before the digital ledger, we had to trust the institutions: if it is in the museum, it is the truth. So here you have the technology that doesn’t belong to anyone and no one can tamper with. It doesn’t mean it is the truth but it is a record that cannot be changed. I can only see a bigger place for that in the future.
AS: Do you wish that it had lived on?
Timing is everything! I believe that there is time and purpose for everything in this world!
There were several people / projects that started around the same time. Some of them continue, and some have moved to new projects. What’s most important is that it inspired the future development of technologies helping creators to monetize in this digital world.
This editorial is part of a series of essays and interviews contextualizing MORROW collective’s {R(Evolutionaries);} project, exhibition and sale commemorating a decade of blockchain art. Launched at Art Dubai Digital 2024 and brought to market in collaboration with SuperRare Labs Team and Sotheby’s.
For more info www.morrow-collective.com/revolutionaries
