Assistant Professor Hyunuk Kim from Elon's Business School presented research on how digital art collectors can use digital wallets to navigate the NFT market.
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Hyun-wook Kim, an assistant professor at the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, is a co-author of a study examining the purchasing behavior of digital art collectors in the rapidly expanding NFT non-fungible token market.
NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are unique digital assets that represent ownership of items such as digital art, music, or other media and are securely stored using blockchain technology.
Kim studied how collectors, known as “wallets” because of their digital storage methods, select and purchase NFTs from various collections.
Key Findings of the Study Visual Similarity Preference: Collectors are more likely to purchase NFTs that are similar to something they already own. For example, someone with a cartoon style NFT is likely to buy more art in that style. Explore and stay put: Some collectors stick with familiar collections, but many explore new collections. The extent of this exploration varies greatly from person to person. Movement Patterns: Collectors make many small movements within a well-known style, but sometimes make big leaps into another style. This is a pattern similar to the natural behavior observed in animals. Implications for platforms and artists: Understanding these patterns will help NFT platforms recommend new art that fits collectors’ tastes and allow artists to create work that appeals to existing tastes.
Kim plans to bring these insights directly into her teaching at Elon.
“In my class, I will use this research to show how machine learning can be used to turn complex data into clear insights,” Kim said. “This helps demonstrate how people's behavior in new digital markets can be analyzed.”
The study, “Exploring wallets across non-fungible token collections,” was published in Scientific Reports and co-authored with Seonbin Jo and Woo-Sung Jung of Pohang University of Science and Technology.
Kim will join Elon University in fall 2023 from Boston University. His expertise includes business analysis, innovation, misinformation, and computational social science. He currently serves as director of Elon's Center for Tissue Analysis.
