The Smartefact platform aims at redefining how we buy, sell, trade, create and enjoy Art. By leveraging blockchain technologies we are able to add a number of significant advantages to our system.

No centralized control: user data belongs only to the user

Each user of the system keeps his own keys. In contrast to centralized data storage systems (such as cloud storage), only the user himself can change the data of a user-owned record. Nobody can cause changes to user data, neither untrustworthy employees, nor a court decision. The user data cannot be changed, and if any changes are reuqired then the data can be excluded from the system by an external revocation certificate, but it is not deleting the user data, just marking it as revoked or comprimised.

Irrefutable proof of events

There is no way for any participant to change an event history or delete any data. Therefore, it is not possible to hide any events, or attribute fake events (e.g., art object examinations) retroactively. Even the service provider (in this case us, Smartefact) cannot do this. All events (even those mistakenly attributed) are stored in the blockchain, and can be analyzed in case of litigation.

Independence from the service provider

The most important advantage of the system is the complete independence of the service from the service provider (Smartefact). Neither the disruption of the system by any participants (including Smartefact), nor even malicious actions and attempts to deliberately interfere with the system, will disrupt the operation of the system (only the out-of-chain services provided by participants may be affected). For example, Smartefact may discontinue support for the verification application - but all alternative verification methods will continue to work independently. Data will never be lost or become unavailable, even if the intermediary ceases to operate or if the data owner ceases to exist. It will not be deleted without paying an annual fee, or become inaccessible if the owner dies.

Full system transparency and validity checks

Data stored in the blockchain is accessible to everyone. Moreover, it is impossible to tamper with data for one particular user (i.e. it is impossible to make two users see different data).
The inability to hide any data from any of the participants or to present different data to different participants is an irrevocable property of the system, and none of the participants (even government agencies, providers, etc.) have the ability to do so.

Secure storage

The key data of the system is placed in a blockchain (and external data such as pictures can be placed anywhere and can be easily re-linked), which means that it is stored and validated on thousands of independent computers in the network.
Modern storage systems are quite reliable, so this is not as much of an advantage as the partitions described above - but only when the data is stored centrally. Decentralized storage, on the other hand, can have reliability problems that do not arise in the case of blockchain.

In fact, using blockchain to store data is the only way to date to ensure that data cannot be tampered with or hidden.
With any centralized storage, this would be possible either by terminating the company managing the storage or by court order.

Smartefact is not a monopoly service provider. It is possible (and documented) to add objects without the company's involvement. In fact, smartefact simply provides a convenient (but not the only) way to register and verify art objects.

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