ARCHIV3: How We Helped Poland's Second-Largest Bank Tokenize Art

What Is ARCHIV3?

In August 2024, ten masterpieces by some of Poland's most celebrated painters - Matejko, Wyspiański, Fałat, Kossak - were minted as NFTs on the blockchain and physically sealed in the Arctic World Archive on Svalbard. The institution behind the project was Bank Pekao S.A., Poland's second-largest financial institution with over 130 years of history and a collection of more than 1,200 artworks. The team that designed and delivered the entire initiative, end to end, was Degen House.

ARCHIV3 is a cultural heritage preservation campaign built on two layers of protection.

Offline: Each artwork was digitized using museum-grade, high-resolution scanning - a process requiring dozens of hours of certified photography to capture perfect color fidelity, undistorted geometry, and microscopic detail. The resulting master files were then transported and stored in the Arctic World Archive on Svalbard - a facility that guarantees a minimum of 1,000 years of preservation, alongside Vatican manuscripts, UNESCO records, and works by Rembrandt and Wisława Szymborska.

Online: Every digitized piece was tokenized as an NFT on the blockchain, creating a permanent, tamper-proof digital record of each work's existence and authenticity.

The collection spans from Jan Matejko's Angel (1889) to Lia Kimura's Mirror of the Soul (2024) - 135 years of Polish art preserved through a single technological framework. The inclusion of Kimura, a contemporary Polish-Japanese artist, reflects the project's ambition to bridge tradition with the future.

What Did Degen House Deliver?

This was not a technology pilot or a proof of concept. Degen House led the entire project from initial concept to global media coverage:

• Creative campaign strategy aligned with the bank's institutional goals
• Coordination of professional art digitization and high-resolution scanning
• Technology consulting and blockchain integration
• Branding and visual identity for the ARCHIV3 campaign
• Collaboration with the Arctic World Archive in Svalbard
• Photo and video production, including full coverage of the Arctic expedition
• PR and media outreach - both local and international

From strategy through an Arctic expedition to international press - a fully executed campaign for one of Central Europe's largest financial institutions.

How Was ARCHIV3 Received?

The project was covered by CoinDesk, Investing.com, Vogue Polska, Galileo (TVN), Money.pl, and Bank.pl. In 2025, ARCHIV3 won the Financial Times & PWM Wealth Tech Award for Best Digital Innovator of the Year in Central and Eastern Europe.

"Banks can play a significantly greater role in culture and society, protecting cultural heritage, investing in social causes, and educating future generations through innovative technology use."- Yuri Bender, Editor-in-Chief, PWM (Financial Times)

ARCHIV3 is proof that blockchain adoption by traditional institutions is not a future scenario - it is already happening. And Degen House is the team delivering it.

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