  Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) have recently surged to mainstream attention by
allowing the exchange of digital assets via blockchains. NFTs have also been
adopted by artists to sell digital art. One of the promises of NFTs is
broadening participation to the arts market, a traditionally closed and opaque
system, to sustain a wider and more diverse set of artists and collectors. A
key sign of this effect would be the disappearance or at least reduction in
importance of seller-buyer preferential ties, whereby the success of an artist
is strongly dependent on the patronage of a single collector. We investigate
NFT art seller-buyer networks considering several galleries and a large set of
nearly 40,000 sales for over 230M USD in total volume. We find that NFT art is
a highly concentrated market driven by few successful sellers and even fewer
systematic buyers. High concentration is present in both the number of sales
and, even more strongly, in their priced volume. Furthermore, we show that,
while a broader-participation market was present in the early phase of NFT art
adoption, preferential ties have dominated during market growth, peak and
recent decline. We consistently find that the top buyer accounts on average for
over 80% of buys for a given seller. Similar trends apply to buyers and their
top seller. We conclude that NFT art constitutes, at the present, a highly
concentrated market driven by preferential seller-buyer ties.
