New protocol aims to improve on-chain NFT intellectual property rights

Quick Take

V-Art Protocol helps embed NFT intellectual property on the NEAR and Ethereum blockchains, with support for Aurora and Polygon coming this year and Solana in the next.
The tool helps improve the visibility of intellectual property rights for NFT projects — a long-running issue in the space.

V-Art's new tool, called the V-Art Protocol, is aimed to help protect IP rights and improve NFT project licensing and will go live on Nov. 2, the blockchain-based digital content monetization platform said.

Projects can verify, protect and manage their IP rights on NEAR and Ethereum blockchains, and V-Art aims to add Aurora and Polygon this year and Solana next year, V-Art CEO Anastasiia Gliebova told The Block at the web3 Summit in Lisbon. The firm raised $1.4 million in seed funding thus far.

NFT IP rights, particularly when it touches upon copyright, have led to skirmishes between NFT project leaders and holders in the past. Case in point was CryptoPunks created by Larva Labs. The NFT project did not have any public guidelines for IP or copyright for years — until users attempted to monetize their NFT, then LarvaLabs sought legal action against such holders.

Partly stemming from unclear NFT IP rights came projects who eschewed copyright altogether such as Nouns, The Block previously reported.

With additional reporting by Lucy Harley-McKeown