There have already been a few high profile rooms of internet history sold as non-fungible tokens, but soon you’ll have a chance to get one of the most important coins of all. As BBC News and the Financial Time report, internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee considering auction the original World Wide Web source code as NFT. the Sotheby’s-run auction will feature nearly 10,000 lines of code (including HTML, HTTP, and URI), original explanatory web pages, a code visualization, a letter from Berners-Lee discussing the meaning, and a constructed code “poster” with Python.
The auction will start at $ 1,000 when the auction begins on June 23 at 2 p.m. EST, although we would expect a much, much higher final bid by the time the auction ends on the 30th. June. The sale will fund the supporting causes of Berners-Lee and his wife.
This is an unusual move for Berners-Lee, who has refused to patent web technology and has long been an advocate for give more control to internet users. The code fell into the public domain decades ago. NFTs are also known for their environmental impact due to the computational requirements of the blockchain.
Berners-Lee, however, told Sotheby’s that he believes NFTs are the “most appropriate way” to own digital creations. The auction house also said it will pay carbon offsets to minimize the impact. You might not feel too guilty for participating in the auction war, even if the sale is not quite what you would expect from a supporter of the open Internet.
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