KnownOrigin

KnownOrigin was an Ethereum-based marketplace for digital artwork, where artists minted and sold work as non-fungible tokens providing proof of ownership, provenance and authenticity. The platform allowed artists to exhibit and sell digital assets, set and modify prices, gift NFTs, maintain artist profiles and self-mint directly through a web3 wallet, while collectors could buy, make offers and bid on works. Asset files and metadata were stored on IPFS, and the smart contracts were fully ERC-721 and ERC-165 compliant.

The product evolved across four generations of contracts (KODA V1 to V4). Early shared V1 and V2 contracts used lazy minting, meaning unsold V2 editions do not exist as tokens until purchased or traded and may not appear on third-party aggregators. Later features included early access sales, embedded NFTs and self-custodial Creator Contracts owned by the artist, which enforced creator royalty percentages at the contract level. The company also built a Merkle-tree-driven non-custodial royalty payment vault and a subgraph for indexing platform data.

By 2023 the team decided to pivot toward broader Web3 work and shut the marketplace down. KnownOrigin no longer receives primary or secondary royalties on any of its contracts; existing tokens are viewable and tradable on third-party marketplaces such as OpenSea, Rarible, Foundation and Magic Eden, and the company committed to covering IPFS pinning costs through 31 January 2027, after which holders must arrange their own preservation via services such as Pinata.

Founding story

KnownOrigin began in 2018 from the question of whether blockchain could be used to mint digital artwork carrying proof of ownership, provenance and authenticity. The first experiment was a pop-up in a Manchester basement featuring 10 artists and 25 physical artworks, where QR codes and a basic wallet app let attendees buy the digital work on the spot and claim the NFT and the physical piece at the same time. Co-founder Andy Gray has described the 2018 motivation as giving creatives a more transparent way to sell their work.

Business model

KnownOrigin operated a two-sided marketplace connecting digital artists with collectors, providing minting infrastructure, artist profiles, fixed-price sales, offers and auctions, and a royalty system for secondary sales. Following the marketplace shutdown, the company states it takes no royalties from primary or secondary sales on any of its contracts.

Marketplace-based: the platform intermediated primary sales of minted artworks and supported creator royalties on resales; the company reported more than $30 million in sales in the year to early 2022. Since the shutdown KnownOrigin receives no royalties from sales of its tokens on third-party marketplaces.

Traction

More than $30 million in sales in the year prior to February 2022, a tenfold increase in unique collectors and creators over the same period, and more than 5,000 creators selling on the platform as of February 2022. The public contracts repository has 35 stars and 15 forks on GitHub.

Latest developments

The KnownOrigin marketplace was shut down in 2023 following a decision to pivot the team toward broader Web3 work. Outstanding bids were settled by returning held ETH to bidders. The company's site now functions as an archive and FAQ, directing holders to third-party marketplaces and Etherscan for interacting with historic tokens and Creator Contracts, and commits to covering token pinning costs until 31 January 2027. Public GitHub activity continued into 2024 on the subgraph repository, with several other repositories archived in 2023.