Generative Art Timeline · Chapter 10: On-Chain Era (2020s)

2020

Nifty Gateway Nurtures Early NFT Market

Event

A promotional graphic from the Nifty Gateway homepage as archived in August 2021, showing three of the works then being sold on the platform as rounded tiles; not a single artwork.
A promotional graphic from the Nifty Gateway homepage as archived in August 2021, showing three of the works then being sold on the platform as rounded tiles; not a single artwork. Nifty Gateway homepage graphic, captured 27 August 2021. Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

While founded in 2018 by Duncan and Griffin Cock Foster and acquired in 2019 by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, Nifty Gateway accounted for much of the 2020 NFT sales. Originally meant to mass-onboard users to NFTs by introducing credit card purchases and branding them as “nifties,” Nifty Gateway played a significant role in fueling the early NFT craze in early 2021, where “Nifty Gateway accounted for $75 million of the $91 million in NFT art auctioned in February 2021,” according to data by CryptoArt.io on Forbes.

Further, Nifty Gateway onboarded Beeple to NFTs and was responsible for his rapid rise in fame through a series of drops in 2020 that propelled his future astronomical prices. The platform also helped popularize other crypto-native artists like Pak, Refik Anadol, Sam Spratt and XCOPY.

Text by Peter Bauman. Generative Art Timeline, Le Random, fact-checked September 2026.

Sources

People

Cameron Winklevoss, Duncan Cock Foster, Griffin Cock Foster, Mike Winkelmann (Beeple), Pak, Refik Anadol, Sam Spratt, Tyler Winklevoss, XCOPY

Movements

Blockchain Art, NFT Art

Filed under

Ideas
Blockchain Art, market, NFT Art
Technologies
NFTs
People
Cameron Winklevoss, Duncan Cock Foster, Griffin Cock Foster, Mike Winkelmann (Beeple), Pak, Refik Anadol, Sam Spratt, Tyler Winklevoss, XCOPY
Organisations
Nifty Gateway

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