WISeKey $WKEY and Ocean Protocol to launch WISeART Market, a peer-to-peer NFT marketplace for exclusive physical art

WISeKey $WKEY and Ocean Protocol to launch WISeART Market, a peer-to-peer NFT marketplace for exclusive physical art

Geneva, Switzerland – March 30, 2021 - Wisekey International Holding Ltd (NASDAQ: WKEY; SIX: WIHN), a leading cybersecurity, IoT, and AI platform company, today announced that is has joined forces with Ocean Protocol ("Ocean”), the leader in decentralized data marketplaces whose team also built the world’s first blockchain-secured art platform.

WISeKey and Ocean are working together to launch WISeART, a decentralized marketplace for physical paintings, sculptures, and more. The marketplace will include non-fungible tokens ("NFTs) to represent the physical work, combined with fungible tokens for more fluid price discovery, and enable staking on physical artworks.

The marketplace combines the strengths of WISeKey and Ocean. WISeKey has developed specialized chips to link physical items with NFTs, and world-class blockchain identity technology. Ocean has developed powerful decentralized marketplace technology, battle-hardened in the domain of data. Combined with WISeKey’s NFTs, this marketplace technology readily ports to the domain of physical art and offers other benefits given the Ocean team’s pioneering experience in blockchain art platforms.

Purchasing an exclusive piece of art is always a matter of great joy, but this purchase comes with the concern that the work may be stolen, the art itself may not be an original, or its provenance might not be verifiable. While most high-end art collectors find it difficult to stop such acts, WISeKey’s WISeART technology takes steps to protect exclusive pieces of artwork. It combines cutting-edge authentication microprocessors with identity blockchain technology, which together with on-the-ground measures can ensure the authenticity of the artwork (see video https://youtu.be/oNvhMvdchGk). Moreover, if the art is stolen, it can be traced, making it difficult to be traded on the secondary market. This control is possible to practice because each artwork’s identity is stored on an immutable ledger (blockchain) in the implemented system.

About WISeKey
WISeKey (NASDAQ: WKEY; SIX Swiss Exchange: WIHN) is a leading global cybersecurity company currently deploying large scale digital identity ecosystems for people and objects using Blockchain, AI and IoT respecting the Human as the Fulcrum of the Internet. WISeKey microprocessors secure the pervasive computing shaping today’s Internet of Everything. WISeKey IoT has an install base of over 1.5 billion microchips in virtually all IoT sectors (connected cars, smart cities, drones, agricultural sensors, anti-counterfeiting, smart lighting, servers, computers, mobile phones, crypto tokens etc.).  WISeKey is uniquely positioned to be at the edge of IoT as our semiconductors produce a huge amount of Big Data that, when analyzed with Artificial Intelligence (AI), can help industrial applications to predict the failure of their equipment before it happens.

The WISeAuthentic blockchain platform integrates the WISeKey semiconductors tags based on the company’s VaultIC154 NFC secure element. These tags, when placed on any product and tapped by an NFC phone, securely authenticate and track the product much like an embedded ePassport and confirm the identity of the product on the blockchain ledger. WISeKey has included the NFT capability to its WISe.ART which uses a patented method for digital certification of authenticity of a physical object, and corresponding computer program and storage device, as well as using the method for digital certification of authenticity of a physical object of value. 

WISekey technology is trusted by the OISTE/WISeKey’s Swiss based cryptographic Root of Trust ("RoT”) provides secure authentication and identification, in both physical and virtual environments, for the Internet of Things, Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence. The WISeKey RoT serves as a common trust anchor to ensure the integrity of online transactions among objects and between objects and people. For more information, visit www.wisekey.com.

About Ocean Protocol
Ocean Protocol’s mission is to kickstart a Web3 Data Economy that reaches the world, giving power back to data owners and enabling people to capture value from data to better our world.
Data is a new asset class; Ocean Protocol unlocks its value. Data owners and consumers use the Ocean Market app to publish, discover, and consume data assets in a secure, privacy-preserving fashion. Third parties can create their own custom marketplaces for their own domains.

Ocean datatokens turn data into data assets. This enables data wallets, data exchanges, and data co-ops by leveraging crypto wallets, exchanges, and other DeFi tools. Projects use Ocean libraries and OCEAN in their own apps to help drive the Web3 Data Economy. The current Ocean datatokens combine fungible trading elements with the non-fungible rights to mint; a forthcoming version will make the non-fungible rights transferable as well.

Data falls under copyright IP, alongside digital art, physical art, trading cards, music, and books. Data can be treated as its own narrow category, or as a general superset across the rest. In practical terms, a decentralized data marketplace can readily be applied to digital art, physical art, and the like.
The OCEAN token is used to stake on data, to govern Ocean Protocol’s community funding, and to buy & sell data. Its supply is disbursed over time to drive near-term growth and long-term sustainability. OCEAN is designed to increase with a rise in usage volume.
Visit oceanprotocol.com to find out more.

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Disclaimer:
This communication expressly or implicitly contains certain forward-looking statements concerning WISeKey International Holding Ltd and its business. Such statements involve certain known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of WISeKey International Holding Ltd to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. WISeKey International Holding Ltd is providing this communication as of this date and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
This press release does not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities, and it does not constitute an offering prospectus within the meaning of article 652a or article 1156 of the Swiss Code of Obligations or a listing prospectus within the meaning of the listing rules of the SIX Swiss Exchange. Investors must rely on their own evaluation of WISeKey and its securities, including the merits and risks involved. Nothing contained herein is, or shall be relied on as, a promise or representation as to the future performance of WISeKey.