By: Yuvraj
Sir Tim Berners-Lee is selling the code he used to create the World Wide Web
as
an NFT.
But, what’s an NFT? WHAT DOES NFT STAND FOR?
Non-fungible token.
But, That doesn’t make it any clearer, does it?
Right, sorry. “Non-fungible” more or less means it’s unique and can’t be replaced with
something else. for instance, a bitcoin is fungible — trade one for an additional bitcoin, and
you’ll have precisely the same thing. A one-of-a-kind card, however, is non-fungible. If you
traded it for a special card, you’d have something completely different. You gave up an
Undertaker card for Ray Mysterio !!! Well, depends on your choices. 😉
How do NFTs work?
At a high level, most NFTs are a part of the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum may be a
cryptocurrency, like bitcoin or dogecoin, but its blockchain also supports these NFTs, which
store extra information that creates their work differently from, say, an ETH coin. it’s worth
noting that other blockchains can implement their versions of NFTs.
So, back to the topic! Again! Tim Berners-Lee is selling the code he used to create the
World Wide Web as an NFT.
What is it, particularly?
The NFT also includes a 30-minute animation and a letter written by Berners-Lee.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee is selling the code he wrote to create the World Wide Web in 1989 as an
NFT, or nonfungible token.
Sotheby’s, which is auctioning the NFT, described the World Wide Web as “the first
hypermedia browser/editor, allowing users to make and navigate links between files across
a network of computers.”
The NFT includes the original archive of dated and time-stamped files containing the source
code, which is about 9,555 lines long.
It includes a 30-minute animation of the code being written; a graphic representation of the
complete code created by Berners-Lee from the first files using Python; and a letter from
Berners-Lee reflecting on the code and his creation of it. “It has been fun to travel back and
look over the code,” he wrote within the letter. “It is amazing to see the items that those
relatively few lines of code, with a help of a tremendous growing gang of collaborators
across the earth, stayed enough on course to become what the online is now.”
What should I buy as NFT?
NFTs can be anything digital (such as drawings, music, your brain downloaded and became
an AI), but tons of the present excitement is around using the tech to sell digital art.
A lot of the conversation is about NFTs as an evolution of art collecting, only with digital art.
Yes, it can become like art collecting, like for those that have crazy money, wish to pay up to
$50,000 for colours on a canvas.
So, What about making copies of digital art and downloading them? can I do that?
Wow, rude. But yeah, that’s where it gets a touch awkward. you’ll copy a digital file as over
and over as you wish, including the art that’s included with an NFT.
But NFTs are designed to offer you something that can’t be copied: ownership of the work
(though the artist can still retain the copyright and reproduction rights, a bit like with
physical artwork). to place it in terms of physical art collecting: anyone can purchase a da
Vinci painting. But just one person can own the original.
Whoever got that Original can appreciate it as an object. With digital art, a replica is pretty
much as good as the original.
But the flex of owning an original…is what drives people to pay crazy amounts.
What’s the purpose of creating an NFT?
That depends on whether you’re an artist or a buyer.
Its mine! I’m an artist!
First off: You would possibly have an interest in NFTs because it gives you how to sell work
that there otherwise won’t be much of a marketplace for.
Also, NFTs have a feature that you simply can enable which will pay you a percentage
whenever the NFT is sold or changes hands, ensuring that if your work gets super popular
and balloons in value, you can be sure that you’ll not be forgotten.
If I’m a buyer?
One of the apparent benefits of buying art is it allows you to financially support artists you
prefer, and that’s true with NFTs. Buying an NFT also usually gets you some basic usage
rights, like having the ability to post the image online or set it as your profile picture. Plus, of
course, there are bragging rights that you simply own the art, with a blockchain entry to
back it up.
If I’m a collector?
Ah, okay. NFTs can work like all other speculative assets, where you purchase it and hope
that the worth of it goes up at some point, so you’ll sell it for a profit.
So is every NFT is unique?
In the boring, technical sense that each NFT may be a unique token on the blockchain. But
while it might be like a Leonardo, where there’s just one definitive actual version, it could
even be sort of a WWE card, where there’s 50 or many numbered copies of identical
artwork.
Who would pay many thousands of dollars for what amounts to a trading card?
Well, that’s a part of what makes NFTs so messy. Some people treat them like they’re the
longer term of art collecting and a few people treat them like Pokémon cards (where they’re
accessible to normal people but also a playground for the mega-rich).
Could I buy anything as an NFT?
There are some attempts at connecting NFTs to real-world objects, often as a kind of
verification method. Nike has patented a way to verify sneakers’ authenticity using an NFT
system, which it calls Crypto Kicks.
Can they be stolen?
That depends. A speciality of blockchain is that it stores a record of every time a transaction
takes place, making it harder to steal than say, a painting hanging during a museum. That
said, cryptocurrencies are stolen before, so it really would depend upon how the NFT is
being stored.
Should I be worried about digital art being around in 500 years?
Probably. Bit rot may be a real thing: image quality deteriorates, file formats can’t be
opened anymore, websites go down, people forget the password. But physical art in
museums is fragile too.
Can I build a safe to store my NFTs?
Well, like cryptocurrencies, NFTs are stored in digital wallets (though it’s worth noting that
the wallet does specifically need to be NFT-compatible).
Are you bored with reading “NFT”?
Yes.
And I think it’s enough for now.
Innovators Quest VIT 