Introducing Arkive: The World’s First Decentralized Physical Museum

SAN FRANCISCO (July 13, 2022) -- Arkive today launched out of stealth to create a community of everyday people who want to curate, own and create culture by opening access to the most exclusive asset class ever created: museums.

Historically, museums have relied on creators, collectors and investors to decide what art is significant and worthy of display. But what’s shown in an exhibit is just a small portion of an institution’s collection and millions of items are locked into private collections owned by the 1%. With Arkive’s down-up model, for the first time, anyone can now be part of defining history, deciding what’s worthy of being preserved and what should be on display. 

“Arkive is an entirely new down-up model where everyday people are part of curating the collection and defining an item’s artistic historical relevance and place in culture,” said Tom McLeod, founder of Arkive. “When we set out, we asked, ‘What if the Smithsonian was owned and curated by the Internet?’ and that’s what led us to launch Arkive. We are hell-bent on building a vibrant community that’s part of defining historical significance.” 

Arkive’s collections are curated by its members, who vote on which items they want to acquire. Eventually, these items will be transferred to non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that replace, store, and manage all historical provenance, authentication, quality, and condition on blockchain. Additionally, anyone will be able to verify the item in existing public places like museums and galleries.

The community has already voted on and acquired the patent for the ENIAC. Invented in 1946, the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) is the world’s first programmable, electronic, general-purpose computer. The patent will go on display via an Arkive traveling exhibition in late 2022 before entering into long-term residency at a prominent computing history museum, as selected by the Arkive membership. The patent for the ENIAC was considered alongside the Burton BB1 Londonderry Snowboard Prototype, built by Jake Burton himself in a Vermont barn. 

In addition to the patent for the ENIAC, Arkive has also acquired Seduction (1985), a vintage print by Lynn Hershman Leeson. In an acquisition round titled “My Body, My Machine,” Arkive community members selected from three works focused on how our identities are being transformed by technology. Seduction was considered alongside Carbon Footprint and Evidence of a Faulty Algorithm, three cornerstone works commenting on the uncanny experience of filtering our lives through a succession of screens. Similar to the patent for the ENIAC, Seduction will be a part of Arkive’s traveling exhibition in late 2022 and will enter into long-term residency at a prominent public location selected by the Arkive membership.

“This is not a museum in the metaverse that you need to wear a headset to enter nor is it a new way to fractionalize ownership of culturally unproven cartoon animals,” said Nate Bosshard, partner at Offline Ventures. “The art market and the emerging trend of cultural ephemera collecting has shown better returns than the S&P 500 over the last 25 years. We believe that Arkive’s community-oriented down-up approach represents a modern way to bring existing collectors and newbies into what has traditionally been a very opaque and gate-kept industry. The Arkive mission to  weave together community, curation and decentralized ownership is a very exciting blockchain use case for us at Offline.

The company is also announcing $9.7M in funding led by Offline Ventures and TCG Crypto with participation from NFX, Freestyle Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Not Boring Capital, Precursor, Chainforest, Coil, Julia Lipton, Joe McCann, Chris Cantino, Marty Bell, Paul Veradittakit and many others.

Arkive is currently taking applications for the first 1,000 potential members. As an alpha member, you will have curatorial power, access to IRL and digital experiences as well as early access to Arkive’s future NFT-based membership.

To apply to be an alpha member, visit Arkive.net. 

About Arkive 

Arkive is the world’s first decentralized physical museum. Arkive’s brand-new model of how a museum can operate gives the people the power to curate and select what items are culturally significant, rather than institutions. Built by museum alums from MoMA and Gagosian Galleries, Arkive was co-founded by Tom McLeod, a 5x founder who exited his last startup, Omni, to Coinbase, and prior to that ran Pagelime (acquired by SurrealCMS in 2015), LolConnect (acquired by Tencent in 2012), and Imaginary Feet which developed 15+ profitable iPhone apps enjoyed by over 10 million users.

Arkive’s investors include Offline Ventures, TCG Crypto, NFX, Freestyle Capital, Not Boring Capital, Awesome People Ventures, ChainforestDAO, Coinbase Ventures, Parade Ventures, Saltwater, Darling Ventures, Precursor Ventures, Coil, Paul Veradittakit of Pantera Capital, Joe McCann, Leore Avidar from Alt, Spice Capital, Chris Cantino of Color Capital, Marty Bell of Poolsuite, Flexx Chapman and Commodore from Krause, Ethan Beard, and Sarah Gibson Tuttle CEO of Olive & June. 

For more information, visit Arkive.net.

Contact Information

Maggie Philbin

Media Contact

VSC for Arkive

arkive@vsc.co