Crypto art, NFT art, and blockchain-related art are increasingly conflated in mainstream narratives which obscure the technical differences and artistic intentions that underlie each. I’ve noticed how this misinterpretation dilutes the cultural significance of this digital art movement, especially following the explosive NFT hype of 2021.
This page provides a detailed framework for understanding crypto art, enabling researchers, curators, and enthusiasts to approach its evolution with clarity and context.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Why Crypto Art Definitions Actually Matter
Crypto art acted as a catalyst and helped propel digital art into mainstream focus, particularly through art NFTs and collectibles. The growing academic attention and global search trends over recent years highlight this evolution.
Data sources: Quantity of academic papers referencing the terms digital art, crypto art and NFTs in Google Scholar (07/2025) and their respective search volumes in Google Trends (07/2025)
NFTs began to dominate the narrative and frequently replaced and distorted the broader field crypto art. The NFT label is often misapplied, even in editorial and academic contexts, to digital art that lacks non-fungible characteristics. My historical documentation showcases a broad lineage of crypto-native art practices that existed long before the NFT hype. Art NFTs, therefore, are only one subset of a much larger cultural and conceptual field.
To facilitate comprehension, I’ll present this framework with visual examples, starting with a technical definitions which evolves it into a value-based approach. The goal is to build a shared vocabulary and vision for this decentralized art movement.
Crypto Art Within the Broader Field of Blockchain-Related Art
Blockchain-related art is physical or digital art that uses blockchain as a subject matter or theme, for provenance purposes, as a technological base, or as a payment method. While all crypto art and Art NFTs are blockchain-related, physical art with this proposed definition model does not fall into either of those two categories.
Crypto Art ≠ NFT Art: Understanding the Cultural Divide
Crypto Art - A Technical Definition Model
In a 2019 position paper on crypto art, I defined crypto art as a digital art forum, an alternative marketplace, and a multidisciplinary collective. This early take was published in the ArXiv repository that same year and in an abbreviated form in the peer-reviewed Leonardo journal in 2021.
Since then, I have continued working on refining the following definition models, tweaking and streamlining it to accommodate new developments.
Crypto art is digital art that is conceptually fused to the blockchain. This could be in the form of fungible tokens, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), or artworks utilizing smart contracts or any other form of blockchain technology. Given this broad definition which accommodates significant early digital artworks that came before NFTs, I recommend using the term “crypto art” over “NFT art.”
Crypto Art and the Traditional Art World
Art NFTs are a natively digital medium for digital assets, and a subset of crypto art. However, NFTs can be metaverse properties, wearables, collectibles, rights, in-game assets, and so many more things. Hence, NFTs don’t always equal art, unless they also store it. Consequently, NFTs are a medium, and so calling digital artists NFT artists is comparable to calling them DVD or USB-stick artists.
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Limitations of a Purely Technical View
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