H.E. Justin Sun, Ambassador, Permanent Representative of Grenada to the WTO & Founder of TRON, has purchased the complete set of “Twelve Digital Zodiac Heads,” the one-of-a-kind NFT art collection, on March 31 for more than $1.5 million at the Twelve Digital Zodiac Heads Special Auction hosted by Metapoly XM, a brand under Poly Auction (Xiamen).
The set of crypto artworks draws inspiration from the Chinese Zodiac. Following the auction, Sun said he plans to donate the collection in the near future for the appreciation of a broader audience.
One of the animal heads will be listed on APENFT Marketplace for auction and introduced as a rare, special-breed horse in WIN NFT HORSE, a horse racing game co-launched by the APENFT Foundation and WINKLink on the TRON blockchain.
The twelve zodiac animals are an important symbol of Chinese culture and its mythology. Every newborn is assigned an auspicious animal based on their birth year. These animals are unchangeable marks that follow each Chinese throughout their life. They serve as a bond to maintain national pride and connection to their shared Chinese heritage. The twelve Old Summer Palace bronze heads are the rarest amongst all the physical embodiments of these symbols.
Gathering the twelve bronze heads in the metaverse marks another major endeavor made by digital technology on the blockchain, as well as in the cultural and artistic sphere. In the context of social informatization and digitization, digital propagation and protection of traditional culture will embrace wider applications to reproduce time-honored artworks in the digital world and diversify people’s experience in art appreciation.
As a trailblazer in digital technology, Sun also has a heavy influence in the realm of top-notch art collections. Through clinching a myriad of artworks by both art masters and emerging digital artists on major trading platforms, Sun has managed to build an impressive portfolio incorporating art, investment, finance, and more. His collections include works by Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Giacometti, Beeple, and Pak, the latter two being the two most valuable crypto artists worldwide.
In addition, Sun has donated a number of well-known works, including Le Nez and Femme nue couchée au collier (Marie-Thérèse), to organizations such as the APENFT Foundation to support the development of digital art. The APENFT Marketplace testnet was recently launched on TRON.
What is APENFT?
Officially registered in Singapore on March 29, 2021, APENFT is backed by the underlying technology of the TRON blockchain, with additional support from the world’s largest distributed storage system BitTorrent File System (BTFS). At the core of our mission, APENFT aims to facilitate the creator economy while catalyzing both financial and cultural inclusion in the metaverse. Our vision is to integrate both the virtual and the real worlds seamlessly. APENFT Foundation is the world’s first NFT art foundation that realizes crossover purchases. We aim to bridge conversations between stakeholders in the traditional art world and the digital art community emerging around NFTs, promote inclusiveness and diversity, broaden our multimedia audience, and increase all members’ engagement. In the future, our collection will be made available to the entire community through a series of curated online exhibitions in the metaverse.
