Maria Samartseva, Counsel and Head of IP Litigation Practice at Rybalkin, Gortsunyan, Dyakin & Partners (RGD), participated in a public talk “NFT – Illusion or Reality?”, which took place as part of the Russian Creative Week.

The event brought together NFT market experts, including artists, collectors, blockchain innovations entrepreneurs and legal counsels. The participants have discussed the latest NFT art projects, trends in the collector community and online auctions, and raised the technical issues and legal aspects of transactions within blockchain.

Maria's speech has drawn attention to the fact that technologies always outpace legislative aspects, which makes it critical to involve legal advisors to properly process NFT transactions. In addition, Maria outlined the possible risks and copyright issues when transforming a physical pieces of art into an NFT.

Prior to speaking at the Russian Creative Week, Maria Samartseva took part in a live broadcast by RBC TV, where together with Alexander Tobol (CTO at VK) and Igor Zakharov (founder of the DBX Digital Ecosystem) she discussed the possible developments of the Russian NFT market and other issues such as problems of authenticity of digital pieces of art and other digital memorabilia as well as the issues of ‘securing integrity’ for this type of digital assets.