A few months ago, Chennai-based Siraj Hassan, a long-time photographer and videographer with an interest in 3D illustrations, came across a post about crypto-art on social media. It piqued his curiosity and after some weeks of research, he decided to turn his artwork into NFTs or Non-Fungible Tokens and put them up for sale.

The process, though, wasn’t as simple as it sounds. Every artwork needs to first be authenticated by the blockchain or marketplace. For this, an artist needs to spend; and spend not in rupees but in digital currency. Hassan converted his INR amount into ETH or Ether, the digital currency of Ethereum, which is a community-run technology that’s home to digital money, global payments, and applications. While in the brick and mortar world, artists meet clients in galleries,  NFT marketplaces have communities called discord groups where artists meet collectors and present their artwork. It took Hassan about three weeks to make his first sale.