Hyunuk Kim, assistant professor at the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, has co-authored a study exploring the purchasing behaviors of digital art collectors in the rapidly expanding “NFT” non-fungible token market.

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are unique digital assets that represent ownership of items like digital art, music, or other media, securely stored using blockchain technology.

Kim studied how collectors, known as ‘wallets’ because of their digital storage methods, choose and purchase NFTs from various collections.

Key Findings in the research

• Preference for visual similarity: Collectors tend to buy NFTs that look similar to what they already own. For example, someone who has a cartoon-style NFT is likely to purchase more art in that style.
• Exploration vs. staying put: While some collectors stick with familiar collections, many explore new ones. The extent of this exploration varies widely among individuals.
• Movement patterns: Collectors often make many small moves within familiar styles and occasionally make big leaps to different styles, a pattern similar to natural behaviors observed in animals.
• Implications for platforms and artists: Understanding these patterns can help NFT platforms recommend new art that matches collectors’ tastes, and artists can create works that appeal to existing preferences.

Kim plans to bring these insights directly into his teaching at Elon.

“In my classes, I plan to use this research to show how we can turn complex data into clear insights using machine learning,” Kim said. “It helps demonstrate how we can analyze people’s behaviors in new digital markets.”

The study, “Wallets’ explorations 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 joined Elon University in the Fall of 2023 from Boston University. His expertise includes business analytics, innovation, misinformation, and computational social science. He is currently the director of the Center for Organizational Analytics at Elon.