The validity of blockchain has been doubted by a few. One of the charges levied against the cryptos is that it is nothing more than a collector's item, a rarified bit of art created for programmers by other programmers. It is thus beautifully ironic that security tokens are securing our past, with a real effort towards tokenizing something of real-world value. And now John McAfee has given a boost to this field by helping to tokenize a Pablo Picasso artwork.

I am helping to tokenize rare art objects – a groundbreaking Blockchain application. We will auction a tokenized Picasso at the end of December. This is our second tokenized painting. The first was a resounding success. Information can he found here:https://t.co/GlgJGcjA3B

— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) November 13, 2018

This idea has been making rounds for a while, putting up for offer small parts of a larger asset, through a cryptographic token; and what's more is that it has been considered as a  viable investment opportunity. This unique use of blockchain to disseminate a Picasso work using a token-based, partial ownership plan is an early example of value-based tokens, whose success should have others follow suit.

This project has 3 main prophets, The first is Maecenas, a decentralized art gallery auction market This blockchain-driven platform lends support to subdividing pieces of fine art for buying and selling. To this end blockchain technology is leveraged so as to create tamper-proof digital certificates that are linked to those pieces of art. They have already dabbled in this field by successfully tokenizing an Andy Warhol painting, which was distributed amongst a number of different investors.

Second, Ethershift.co is an ERC20 cryptocurrency exchange that provides access to almost 4 scores of crypto assets. Interestingly, it has no need to set up accounts and lets its customers do their trading without asking for any personal information. And lastly, John McAfee is a computer researcher and businessman who founded McAfee Associates in 1987

As noted, Maecenas has teamed up with crypto exchange Ethershift.co and computer security expert John McAfee and plan on “Project Phoenix”. They intend this to be the “first ‘perpetual' digitalization and tokenization of a Picasso work of fine art.” The details are yet to be released about the exact painting, in fact, it is likely the process will involve hiding the picture from view.

An announcement via official channels by  Maecenas says:“We are tokenizing a masterpiece, and making the painting perpetually inaccessible. Any eventual release date of the physical painting can only be decided via a voting process by token holders, after the minimum amount of time has passed well into the future,”

While Art tokenization is not an unheard idea, the prospect of the token has not been as promising as one might expect it to be.The ART token, mostly used to buy and sell small portions of artworks has been quite unstable, with prices rising and crashing with extreme regularity. To give one an idea of the extreme volatility, In the last 10 days the prices have fluctuated from .25 to .10, in this same time the prices have come close to bottoming out or hitting the peak 7 times. This is a far cry from the $2.18  trade value at its peak in January With a total market cap of only  $6 million the token is certainly on the lower end of the spectrum. The idea of tokenizing a work of art was to lift the price of the token. For a little perspective, the most expensive Picasso painting was auctioned off at over $100 million.

It should be noted that the whole thing is still in its infancy with a long way to go before processes are fully etched out about their creation and distribution. Yet their very nature and legality are still under scrutiny. It is safe to assume the KYC procedures to ensure the correct ownership is going to be no easy task. In having said that, there is no reason to imagine failure as a foregone conclusion. With the sort of backing for this project, there might still be hope.

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