We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sam Miller. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sam below.

Sam, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I am a long-time art collector and corporate finance attorney, and have always been passionate about making art more accessible.

In my professional capacity, I got involved in blockchain in 2017 working on regulatory aspects of ICO’s. Art is a fantastic use case for blockchain, particularly using NFTs to own, manage, inventory, authenticate and to buy and sell art. While the NFT boom in 2020 onwards focused on digital art, it clouded the benefits that NFTs could bring to real-world asset ownership. The initial NFT haze and hype is starting to clear and it is now very ripe to show the world that NFTs mean, and can do more than just a jpeg or a video file attached to a blockchain token.

As a collector, the concept of The Fine Art Ledger (FAL), as a platform to connect blockchain records (or NFTs) to real-world physical assets, was a no-brainer as it solved the fundamental problem experienced with inventorying and managing my own art collection. Tired of having stand-alone spreadsheets or art inventory management software which were not connected to the art itself, I wanted a means of using my mobile phone to not only authenticate the artwork, but to pull all my information and documents for the art (for example the original purchase invoice, bill of sale, certificate of authenticity, auction record etc.) from the artwork itself.

So was born The Fine Art Ledger which is a web-based mobile application that generates a ‘Mobile Fine Art Experience’ (MFAX) on your phone when you interact with the work, not only serving a real-time blockchain authenticated Certificate of Authenticity for the work but also the art and artist’s story, the provenance of the work and rich content such as videos, images, sound clips, buy-now buttons, documents and other content to really immerse the art viewer in the art and make the experience of learning about the art so much more interactive and enjoyable.

This year we added Augmented Reality to our MFAX, so you can design an AR experience and really make the art pop out.

It soon became clear that FAL had way more application than just for art collectors, and our MFAX’s can make art promotion easy for galleries, artists, art fairs, art museums, art hotels and restaurants : in fact any space that has art on the walls. We believe that providing better access to art info makes people more interested and invested in the art; and here they get all the info in a ‘Shazam’ type experience on the devices they use the most : their mobile phones.

We are about to launch our Marketplace, which is one of, if not the first NFT Marketplace geared to Physical NFTs, i.e. NFTs controlling underlying art assets. This will provide remarkable opportunities to use NFTs to buy and sell real world art using NFTs not just as accompaniments to physical art unlockables, but potentially as instruments of of ownership in underlying physical assets, not too different to how documentary credits in bulk commodity sales work.

Focusing on Physical NFTs is a pioneering endeavor and a perception changing experience. This is potentially industry changing not only as to how we own, manage and buy and sell art, but how we own and pay for any material real-world assets in general.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I think the most rewarding part of what we are doing is really pushing the envelope of how art is owned, managed, and bought and sold, how art information is stored and delivered, and seeing more people engage with art though our platform and Mobile Fine Art Experiences.

Art is a fascinating world, truly its own reward, but with layers of engagement and immersion that go beyond a picture on the wall. Last week I was out in North Carolina at the both the Ackland Art Museum and North Carolina Museum of Art, and what struck me was how visitors were walking through galleries in the museums with nothing really more than the briefest information (usually posted on a typical vinyl label) about each artwork to go by. At Ackland there were paper sheets explaining a bit more about the artist and the artist’s motivation but no one seemed to be using them. How amazing would it be to see people actually immerse themselves in the art info on their mobile phones.

It is that extra bit about the artworld, the story behind each artwork, that go me started as a collector, with each layer of information and experience drawing me further into the art enjoyment. From art fairs, to exhibitions, to watching artist’s careers and truly appreciating the message or story behind the art, that experience is a life changing and extremely rich and rewarding immersion.

FAL’s fundamental mission is to make art and art information more accessible to everyone. We do that by using blockchain, NFTs, Artificial Intelligence and other technology to recognize works of art and to serve authenticated information about the artwork to people’s mobile phones when they interact with the physical artwork.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

We work in a very technical field where people struggle to digest technology like NFTs, AR and AI.

We started in 2018 when NFTs were not a widely known or recognized concept or even defined as such. We wanted to authenticate digital images and clips and test the market for blockchain authenticated fine art digital prints, which we called ‘Digital Editions’. At that time, the concept wasn’t appreciated and we had many conversations with gallery owners, artists and others who looked at us blankly and asked why would anyone ever want to buy a digital copy of an artwork? Where would they display it? What would protect against duplication of the image etc. The concept of blockchain actually authenticating an image or a video clip as the authentic original and original artifact was totally lost on people.

Then came the NFT boom. Suddenly we were getting calls. Is that what you are doing? Yes, that is what we have been trying to tell you for a while now… But even then NFTs were marketed, and caught the world’s attention in ways which we felt were designed more for short-term profit then long-term understanding. Now, most can’t see beyond NFTs as digital art.

Pushing forward to bring the best use case for NFTs to the world has been a challenge given the technical complexities, and the NFT fad that generated an almost cult like following. That NFTs are simply controllable electronic records hosted on distributed ledgers capable of being put to different tasks is not evident. It needs to be explained, and perceptions changed. That NFTs can have very beneficial uses in authenticating, owning, managing, inventorying and buying and selling real world assets is not a point at which may people have yet arrived, and it is a persistent challenge to change perceptions.

Being a pioneer in the Physical NFT space takes persistence indeed. But it is very rewarding when finally the penny drops with the people we are speaking to.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I have always been fascinated with pushing boundaries and existing convention. One of my favorite quotes (and books) is from David Mitchell’s ‘Cloud Atlas’: ” All boundaries are convention”.

As an attorney, Web 2 opened up all types of possibilities for changing the way legal advice is sought and provided.

By 2008, there were a few pioneers in this space trying to build models for providing legal services online. I was fascinated with the concept, and inspired by Facebook and LinkedIn built VirtualLawDirect.com a feature rich portal for attorneys to onboard and manage clients, documents, billing and directly provide legal services.

However, regulatory constraints, the nature of higher ticket legal advice and how it is found and provided made it clear that the early rush and excitement about Web 2 for legal advice would soon evaporate. Most of those early startups pivoted into attorney or paralegal referral websites or legal practice management platforms. We didn’t see this as cutting edge anymore so we did more than pivot: we exited the industry and moved to Web3 for which the beginning is only starting to happen.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thefineartledger.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thefineartledger/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thefineartledger
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-fine-art-ledger
• X: https://twitter.com/NFTAllYourArt
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc03n160qh3zbE-8AVyLKqQ
• Other: Discord : https://discord.com/invite/NdhWxVgpeP

Image Credits
Julian Lennon The Fine Art Ledger, LLC