What is Bitmark, the first multi-chain NFT wallet invested in and launched by Alibaba?

Author: Nianqing, Chain Catcher

Recently, blockchain technology company Bitmark announced the completion of a $5.6 million financing round, led by Galaxy Interactive and North Island Ventures, and also announced the launch of a multi-chain NFT wallet named Autonomy.

Previously, in 2019, Bitmark had secured $3 million in funding led by HTC, along with investments from Alibaba and the well-known crypto venture capital firm DCG. According to public information, this project is also Alibaba's only investment in the blockchain/NFT field to date.

At that time, Bitmark was positioned as a blockchain property rights startup, supporting the registration of assets and data related to digital assets on the blockchain, which could be traded, lent, and sold.

Now, Bitmark is focusing more on the digital art/NFT field. From the digital art gallery Feral File to the NFT wallet Autonomy, Bitmark is attempting to gather digital art enthusiasts on its platform and delve into the digital art sector. "The more people interact with their collectibles in their daily environment, the greater their value becomes, and it deepens people's understanding and use of digital art," said Bitmark CEO Sean Moss-Pultz.

Bitmark: Marking Data Ownership

Bitmark is headquartered in Taiwan, China. Its early main product, Bitmark Protocol, was launched in 2016 and was awarded the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer Award in 2020. According to its official website, over 1 million pieces of data and property in fields such as healthcare, music, art, and finance have been registered to date.

Bitmark Protocol positions itself as an interface for developers and the value internet, providing technical standards for asset on-chain registration, specifically designed for large-scale handling of digital asset rights, suitable for applications that require collaboration around assets. At the same time, the protocol has established corresponding solutions for privacy and collaboration, featuring access control and delegation functions.

In the field of music copyright, Bitmark has partnered with music streaming company KKBOX, with ownership of digital streaming music stored in the Bitmark Property System.

In the area of medical data, Bitmark collaborates with pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, health startups like H2, and other pharmaceutical firms, aiming to encourage users to contribute and utilize their health data through privacy and blockchain technology, turning data into assets.

For instance, in a project with the University of California, Berkeley, to provide health data, Bitmark developed tools to help researchers find potential data donors on social applications like Facebook and WeChat. Donors will know exactly where their data is being used and for what purpose, while researchers can directly confirm the source of the data and whether students consented to its use.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Bitmark launched a pandemic prediction platform also named Autonomy. By integrating government data and user-uploaded information, it provided a "pandemic forecast" function similar to weather forecasts, alerting users to safe locations. Similar to the confirmed case map feature of Gaode Map, the difference is that users have greater autonomy over their data. However, Bitmark's pandemic prevention app was ultimately shelved due to Apple's COVID-19 policy (which required any software related to the coronavirus to be published by official health organizations or government departments) preventing it from being listed on the App Store.

Additionally, Bitmark participated in the production of HTC's blockchain phone, Exodus, launched in 2018. Bitmark's co-founder and CEO also served as the technical and data director for the Exodus phone, with the Bitmark team responsible for creating digital ownership projects based on cryptographic technology. However, the Exodus phone launched by HTC received a lukewarm response in the market. Bitmark's recent blog also mentioned that the team is collaborating with HTC on key management and social data experiments.

Bitmark Blockchain Architecture Diagram

Digital Art NFT Market: Feral File

In 2021, Bitmark launched the digital art market Feral File. This project differs from trading markets like OpenSea that focus on PFP avatars or comprehensive NFTs, as its platform primarily features digital art, targeting a more traditional audience of art collectors.

Since its launch over a year ago, Feral File has collaborated with partners such as modern art museums to launch NFT art exhibitions, as well as curated exhibitions covering various artists, formats, and themes. Feral File has even hired curators to conduct online curation for digital artists, with works auctioned or sold in NFT form.

Feral File defines itself as "a fusion of an online art gallery, marketplace, and NFT publisher," built upon the classic legal agreement from 1971, "the agreement for artists to retain transfer and sales rights." Currently, Feral File supports credit card and USDC payments, with plans to support BTC and ETH payments later this year.

A notable aspect is that Feral File is a native NFT trading market on the Bitmark blockchain, rather than based on existing, more mature public chains like Ethereum.

The reason for this is that these public chains do not adequately mark unique digital assets. Although Bitmark's product portfolio is quite broad, including NFTs, music copyrights, cryptocurrencies, data, and real estate, these projects always revolve around "digital assets." Bitmark initially considered the Bitcoin system, but property and currency cannot be equated; better tracking and trading of these non-fungible, unique assets is necessary. Under this premise, the system must meet three conditions: 1. Prohibit splitting and merging assets; 2. Support metadata; 3. Acknowledge the possibility of public ownership.

Thus, Bitmark developed a protocol more suitable for applications requiring collaboration around assets, allowing standardized expression of assets across any blockchain. For example, Feral File uses the Bitmark blockchain to track versions of artworks and the owners of each version. Feral File only adds information to the Bitmark blockchain when an artist first issues an artwork and when ownership transfers from one account to another. After creating a new Feral File account, a new Bitmark account is created in the background. This account ID is a unique alphanumeric sequence used to track all Feral File transactions through the blockchain.

At the same time, the Bitmark protocol has standardized secondary sales, enabling artists to participate in the value created when their works appreciate.

Currently, users can log into Feral File using either email or wallets like Autonomy and MetaMask.

Multi-Chain NFT Wallet: Autonomy

According to official information, Autonomy is an application designed to help people organize, search, and experience digital art NFTs, similar to how Google Photos manages large collections of digital photos.

Bitmark CEO Sean Moss-Pultz stated that digital art is currently limited to viewing on computer web pages, while current NFT wallet applications only display thumbnails and do not present generated artworks, videos, or complete high-resolution images. Autonomy helps collectors escape the cold user experience of crypto wallets and enter the real world of mobile applications and physical displays like projectors and TVs.

Specifically, the Autonomy NFT wallet allows users to create their own collectible galleries through mobile devices, showcasing digital art with more refined panels, and supports viewing digital art on terminals such as TVs or projectors. Additionally, Autonomy can automatically help users discover new digital art by understanding the artists they collect, the works they create, and the pieces they purchase for themselves.

According to official materials and the experience of Chain Catcher reporters, a significant feature that distinguishes this wallet from other crypto wallets is that after users enter the wallet using a mnemonic phrase, they can see images of all NFT collectibles on the homepage, while crypto assets like ETH do not appear on the homepage and require clicking an icon in the upper right corner to view.

Autonomy Wallet Interface

Currently, Autonomy supports displaying NFTs from the Bitmark, Ethereum, and Tezos blockchains, with plans to integrate more blockchains in the coming months. Furthermore, according to its roadmap, Autonomy will launch "transfer" and "loan" features in July, allowing users to activate ownership rights for collectibles, such as lending artworks to friends.

Conclusion

Although Bitmark is positioned around "digital property," its application scenarios have always been unclear. Its development focus has shifted from real estate, healthcare, and music to digital art, and only with the launch of the digital art NFT market and online gallery Feral File has Bitmark developed relatively mature application products, leading to the emergence of the Autonomy NFT wallet.

In the crypto industry, digital art remains a relatively niche field, but it is also one of the areas with clearer application scenarios and higher penetration among traditional audiences. This field may give rise to blockchain projects with long-term viability.