From canvas to crypto: digital art and NFTs in the art market – innovation, hype, and long-term impact

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) promised to change how art is owned, sold, and valued, yet their rapid rise was followed by an equally rapid decline in market activity. This article asks what remains after the hype. Drawing on research in marketing, cultural economics, law, and information systems, it positions NFTs as a strategic marketing phenomenon that reconfigures the mechanisms of scarcity, ownership, intermediation, engagement, governance, and value in art markets. The article develops a framework of seven tensions in which each promise of tokenization is paired with a corresponding risk. Scarcity can support exclusivity but invite speculation, disintermediation can empower artists but deepen platform dependence, and open access can widen participation while creating new forms of exclusion. It then shows how the five papers in this Special Issue of the Journal of Strategic Marketing shed light on these tensions across consumption, intermediation, market coordination, artist participation, and creator value. Together, the evidence suggests that tokenization does not replace established mechanisms of cultural and economic value creation but redistributes them across platforms, communities, and creators. The article closes with a research agenda on value formation, intermediation, engagement, inclusion, market coordination, sustainability, and the convergence of NFTs with adjacent technologies such as artificial intelligence.