Digital art is artwork made or displayed using digital technology, including painting and drawing software, photo manipulation, 3D modelling, animation, generative art written in code and work produced with artificial-intelligence tools. Artists have worked digitally since the 1960s, but because digital files can be copied endlessly, such work was long hard to sell as a unique original. Non-fungible tokens changed that from about 2017 by recording a verifiable, tradable claim of ownership on a blockchain, usually under the ERC-721 standard. The market peaked in 2021, when a collage by the artist Beeple sold at Christie's for about $69 million, and then contracted sharply. Buyers should note that an NFT usually conveys a token, not the copyright, and that the image itself is often stored off-chain. Also see NFT use cases and the creator economy.
Last updated 13 Nov 2026