Noah Davis (curator, Christie's digital) — Christie's 3.0 — dedicated on-chain auction platform

2022

Artists: Noah Davis (curator, Christie's digital) · Year: 2022 · Medium: Dedicated NFT auction platform operated by Christie's · Substrate: Ethereum smart contracts; Christie's-branded interface; integration with OpenSea marketplace infrastructure · Place: New York, USA · Institution: Christie's (parent); Ethereum and OpenSea (backend infrastructure) Christie's 3.0 launched in September 2022 as a dedicated on-chain NFT auction platform, operated directly by Christie's and running its sales on Ethereum rather than through traditional auction infrastructure. The platform ran curated sales of exclusively digital-native work, with bidding executed via smart contract rather than through Christie's traditional telephone-and-room auction conventions. The first sale, curated by Noah Davis, featured generative works by Diana Sinclair and others. Christie's 3.0 was, institutionally, the most direct commitment a major traditional auction house made to the NFT market as a permanent category. Christie's had already sold Beeple's Everydays in March 2021 and HUMAN ONE in November 2021 through their conventional auction infrastructure; 3.0 went further by moving the sales themselves onto blockchain. The move was significant because it required Christie's to operate within crypto-native technical conventions rather than requiring collectors to adapt to traditional auction conventions. The platform has operated since launch with curated sales run several times per year. It has not been a major commercial success by Christie's standards — traditional-auction-house sales dwarf the 3.0 platform's volume — but its continued operation through the 2022-24 crypto winter demonstrates Christie's institutional commitment to the category beyond the speculative peak. Christie's 3.0 sits alongside Sotheby's Natively Digital as the two major auction houses' sustained institutional infrastructure for NFT art. Lore Christie's launched the Christie's 3.0 dedicated NFT-auction platform in late 2022 under the leadership of Noah Davis, the in-house specialist who had managed the March 2021 Beeple sale. Davis had been at Christie's since 2017 and had been the institution's primary NFT-knowledgeable internal advocate through the 2021-22 surge; the dedicated 3.0 platform was the institutional capstone of his work. Davis left Christie's in late 2023 to take a senior position at the CryptoPunks parent company Yuga Labs, where he led the Punks division until departing in 2024. Christie's 3.0 has continued under successor leadership with substantially reduced trading volume reflecting the broader NFT-market correction. The institution remains committed to digital-art auctioning but has reduced the dedicated 3.0 staff substantially since Davis's departure. Sources • Christie's — Christie's 3.0 announcement and sale catalogs • Davis, Noah — press interviews • Decrypt, CoinDesk coverage