Exchange.Art

Exchange Art was a Solana NFT marketplace for fine digital art: one-of-one pieces, small editions and curated series. It opened in October 2021. It shut down for good on August 1, 2026, after a long slump in the market for art on chain.

It stood out in two ways. It was built around the art and the artist, with curated pages instead of trading charts. And it gave artists a way to make sure they got paid a royalty each time their work was resold. The team behind the memecoin Bonk Bonk$0.00000305-0.5% bought it in 2025. The site is now offline, but the art made there still lives on Solana. Owners can list it on other marketplaces.

Is Exchange Art shut down?

Yes. Exchange Art said on X on July 2, 2026 that it would close on August 1. In its words, it "could not find a viable path forward as a company fiscally during this prolonged bear market for art on chain."

The homepage at exchange.art now carries a closing notice that reads "We're closed", with thanks to every artist and collector who used the site. Its help centre no longer loads.

Before the end, users were told to log in and save any data they needed. The team said it would hand back all art and funds held in its sale and escrow contracts to their owners before closing. It also said no extra steps were needed from artists or collectors to keep their art safe, since every piece sits on Solana and can be imported elsewhere. BlockBeats, via KuCoin, reported the same terms.

How Exchange Art worked: auctions, editions and offers

Artists minted their work on Exchange Art and sold it on the same site. Buyers had four ways in:

• Live auctions, where bids ran against a clock.
• Fixed-price listings, to buy at once.
• Offers, where a buyer named a price and the owner could take it.
• Editions, so an artist could sell a set number of copies of one work.

Work was shown on artist pages and in curated series. It felt closer to a gallery wall than a trading screen. NFTs bought there went straight to the buyer's own wallet. The site only held art or funds in escrow while a listing, bid or auction was open.

Each sale type ran as its own program on Solana. These are the four our listing tracks:

• Instant sale: AmK5g2XcyptVLCFESBCJqoSfwV3znGoVYQnqEnaAZKWn
• Auction: exAuvFHqXXbiLrM4ce9m1icwuSyXytRnfBkajukDFuB
• Mint: EXBuYPNgBUXMTsjCbezENRUtFQzjUNZxvPGTd11Pznk5
• Offer: exofLDXJoFji4Qyf9jSAH59J4pp82UT5pmGgR6iT24Z

Exchange Art fees for buyers and creators

Under its last fee model, artists paid nothing to sell. The buyer paid the fee instead, added on top of the price. Before it went offline, the Exchange Art help centre put that fee at 5% on a first sale and 2.5% on a resale, with no fee to list.

So on a first sale, the artist kept the full price, less any split they had set up. The buyer paid a little more than the price on the tag.

Royalty protection for Exchange Art NFTs

In late 2022, some big marketplaces, Magic Eden among them, made royalties optional. That meant artists could lose their cut when work was resold. Exchange Art pushed the other way with a Royalties Protection Standard.

The standard worked for art first minted on Exchange Art. Artists who opted in used an allow list to pick which other marketplaces could list their pieces. A site that skipped royalties could be left off.

CEO Alex Fleseriu told CoinDesk the aim was to stop work being "forced-listed" on sites "where royalties are simply not honored."

Code Canvas and the move to Ethereum

In March 2023 the team opened Code Canvas, a second marketplace for generative art. That is art made by code, where each mint creates a new piece. Like Art Blocks on Ethereum, it ran curated drops and let buyers trade the results.

Later that year Exchange Art added Ethereum, starting with more than 80 artists from that chain. COO Larisa Barbu told CoinDesk the goal was to become a hub for digital art, and that going multichain was the next step.

By then, CoinDesk said, 16,000 Solana artists had joined and earned $13 million between them.

Bonk's acquisition of Exchange Art

The Bonk team announced it had bought Exchange Art on March 27, 2025. It did not say what it paid. Bonk co-founder TheOnlyNom said the aim was to widen artists' reach and improve the rewards for both creators and collectors.

The artist JT Liss, who led Bonk's Art Masters programme, took charge of the site. SolanaFloor reported that the first job was a better website. As president, Liss set out the wider plans in a talk at Accelerate 2025, including pricing in dollars with payment in other Solana tokens. The marketplace closed about sixteen months after the deal.

The Exchange Art token (ART)

Exchange Art had its own token, ART. When Bonk took over, SolanaFloor noted that ART traded only on decentralised exchanges, with thin liquidity and no centralised exchange listing. Neither side had shared a plan to fold it into Bonk.

With the marketplace closed, ART has no live product behind it. It is the token of a closed project. Its price and trading data are on the token page.

Who Exchange Art was for, and what holders can do now

Exchange Art suited two groups. One was digital artists working without a gallery, above all those who cared about royalties. The other was buyers who collect art for the work itself. Fast traders were better served elsewhere, since the site was built for curation.

As a marketplace, it now suits no one. What matters is what owners do next:

• Collectors still hold their NFTs in their own wallets. They can keep, sell or send them using any Solana marketplace that supports them.
• Artists can relist their work elsewhere. If you used the royalty allow list, check which sites can now list those pieces.
• Anyone with a live listing, bid or escrow at closure should check their wallet to make sure the art or funds came back.

Is Exchange Art safe? Risks after the shutdown

The main risk is plain: the site is gone. Its pages, account data and support are offline. Anything you did not save before it closed can't be got back through Exchange Art.

• Escrow returns depend on the team's promise to hand back everything held in its contracts. If something did not come back, there is no help desk left to ask.
• No team now runs a site for the four programs listed above. Be wary of any link that claims to be a "new" Exchange Art unless the official @exchgART account says so.
• The ART token had thin trading even before the closure, and the site it was tied to no longer exists.

Exchange Art alternatives on Solana

Several Solana marketplaces still sell digital art. None is a direct swap. No one site has the same mix of hand-picked art, fees paid by the buyer and a royalty allow list.

• Mallow SMORES$0.00280-2.3% is the closest match for Exchange Art's crowd. It is a Solana site to find, make and collect digital art, and Liss named it as a partner in his Accelerate talk. Mallow posted a message to Exchange Art users the day the closure was announced.
• Magic Eden is a general NFT marketplace that started on Solana and has since added other chains. It lists far more than art. Its 2022 move to optional royalties was what Exchange Art's standard was built to resist.
• Tensor is a Solana NFT marketplace aimed at active traders. It suits buyers who care more about quick sales than a gallery-style display.