The idea was developed by Julia Kirylczuk (WUT Faculty of Chemistry), Małgorzata Kurcjusz (WUT Faculty of Architecture) and Jan Prugarewicz (WUT Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology), as well as by Abby Hadidian, Gelvin Escueta and Alex Chau from the San Francisco State University. The students had support of experts from the American company Ripple, specializing in blockchain technology.

– The greatest challenge in the project was to solve the issue of temporary allocation of rights to a given work of art – explains Jan Prugarewicz. – We decided to use XRP technology, which against other blockchain technologies has low transaction costs (around 0.004 dollar/transaction), is fast (circa 3 transactions per second) and has good scalability.

Developers of the app A’RENT with Professor Mariusz Kaleta, photo Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology

The mobile app A’RENT allows collectors to create their own galleries in line with the words ”Become a curator of your own art galleries”. In a simple way, the users are led by the app. They do not need to set up digital wallets or analyse legal issues connected with rent to make artwork available on their conditions, in line with the second rule of the project ”Stay in control of your artwork”. The solution makes use of a preliminary business model which defines access levels and in particular, allows exclusive or shared rent.

The project was done within the academic network programme SUGAR, coordinated for a few years by Professor Mariusz Kaleta from the WUT Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology.