Artist Pak sells 266,445 NFTs for one (evolving) work The Merge for $91.8M on Nifty Gateway
nftjedi
A Pak NFT project generated $91.8 million this past weekend. The big sale took place not in an auction house but on the online platform Nifty Gateway https://t.co/xJjTvcAEg1
Pak, the pseudonymous artist, may have wrested the title of the highest sale for a NFT-based artwork, although it’s unclear how to view it.
Mike Winkelmann, aka Beeple, holds the record for the highest NFT sale at $69M for Everydays: The First 5,000 Days, which sold this past March 2021 at a Christie’s auction.
Pak’s work was sold on Nifty Gatewayas 266,445 NFTs obtained by 26,000 people.
But this was no ordinary sale. Each NFT called a “mass token” combined–or “merged” with other NFTs in digital wallets of the buyers. As Gotham describes: “If collectors bought enough NFTs from the collection, the digital files begin to interact and combine in the user’s digital wallet.This process then creates a new and totally-unique NFT from the previously existing units. The more collectors bought, the more the pieces ‘merged,’ creating completely new files that wouldn’t be found anywhere else.”
Plus, it sounds like The Merge will change afterwards, but it’s hard to tell how.
Merge is a single artwork distributed across many tokens, not a collection of artworks. Because without the whole, the tokens that make this artwork don't convey a narrative.
