ArsMuse

Dorve's own art marketplace, built on per-NFT smart contracts and its own Polygon cryptocurrency, spanning physical art, digital media and event tickets.

ArsMuse was Dorve’s own art marketplace, built on NFT smart contracts with its own cryptocurrency, ARS, on the Polygon network. We took it from concept to a working product that sold physical art, digital media and event tickets, and along the way we designed Mutable Smart Contracts (MSC), contracts that could change within the coin’s own nodes.

ArsMuse combined several kinds of sale under one roof. For physical objects, the NFT acted as a certificate of authenticity tied to the piece. For digital art, it sold music, video and other media directly. Later it added ticketing for events. We built the whole venture end to end: the concept and user research, the brand, the whitepapers and a set of high-end video presentations, the outreach to investors, our own NFTs produced in 3D and video, the relationships with artists, the creation of the ARS cryptocurrency (first on Solana, then rebuilt on Polygon), and the design and development of the marketplace, the ticketing platform and the security systems around them. It was by far our most ambitious project and the one that drew on the most people and disciplines.

At the technical core was a concept we developed and named Mutable Smart Contracts, or MSC: contracts that could mutate within the nodes of a currency, in this case ARS on Polygon. Rather than a fixed contract per asset, one contract could adapt to different roles across the platform, from validating a physical piece, to carrying a digital release, to controlling an event ticket through its lifecycle. That flexibility is what let a single marketplace handle authenticity, digital ownership and ticketing without treating each as a separate system.

The product worked and it earned revenue, but the timing was against us. The wider crypto collapse hit our funding just as we were about to bring investors on board. We kept ArsMuse running on our own funds and the platform’s earnings for as long as we could, then it became unsustainable and we closed it in 2023. What it left behind is a deep, cross-disciplinary body of work, from tokenomics and smart-contract design to branding, 3D and video, and the MSC concept itself.

Project info

Requirements

Build, from nothing, an art marketplace that could sell physical art (with the NFT as proof of authenticity), digital art such as music and video, and later event tickets, backed by its own cryptocurrency and by smart contracts flexible enough to cover all three. It needed everything a venture needs at once: concept and user research, brand and messaging, whitepapers and investor materials, the coin itself, the marketplace and ticketing platforms, and the security around them.

Strategies & techniques

Product conceptualisation · User research · Branding and visual identity · Tokenomics and cryptocurrency design (ARS, on Polygon, originally Solana) · Mutable Smart Contracts (MSC) design · NFT smart-contract development · Whitepapers · High-end video presentations · 3D and video NFT production · Artist relations · Marketplace design and development · Event ticketing platform · Security systems · Investor outreach

Tools

Ideation: product conceptualisation, user research, the tokenomics and design of the ARS coin, and the Mutable Smart Contracts concept, supported by whitepapers and investor materials. Design and prototyping: brand and visual identity, UI design for the marketplace and the ticketing platform, NFT assets produced in 3D and video, and a set of high-end video presentations. Delivery and testing: development of the ARS cryptocurrency on Polygon (after an initial build on Solana), the NFT smart contracts, the marketplace and ticketing platforms, and the security systems around them.

Final results

We built and ran ArsMuse as a working art marketplace with its own cryptocurrency, ARS, on Polygon, selling physical art with NFT-backed authenticity, digital media, and event tickets, all running on our Mutable Smart Contracts. The product worked and earned revenue. What it could not outrun was timing: the crypto market’s collapse cut off our funding just as we were closing on investors. We sustained ArsMuse on our own funds and its earnings for as long as we could, then closed it in 2023. It remains our most ambitious project and the one that drew on the widest range of skills, from tokenomics and smart-contract engineering to branding, 3D and video, and it is where we developed the MSC concept.