Yet another NFT sale but this time it might actually be something unique. You can now own the original World Wide Web or well, you can own something like a digital representation of its source code. NFTs have successfully assigned value to digital assets and have provided a way to buy and sell them. What’s actually being sold is kind of a certificate of the ownership of the digital asset.
Now, Sir Tim Berners-Lee wants to be in on the action and he’s selling the World Wide Web. Sir Tim Berners-Lee has been dubbed the “Father of the Web” and he has now decided to auction off the original source code as an NFT. Imagine buying it and owning the original World Wide Web.
The work to be auctioned off includes the original archive of dated and time-stamped files from 1990 and 1991, containing 9,555 lines of source code. It even includes the original HTML documents that thought the first web users how to use the application. There is also a 30-minute long animated video of the code being written and a digital signature from the daddy, Berners-Lee himself.
The NFT also includes a letter written by him in he which reflects on the whole process of creating the code and the impact it has made on the whole world. In a press release, Berners-Lee explained that “Three decades ago, I created something which, with the subsequent help of a huge number of collaborators across the world, has been a powerful tool for humanity”. Indeed it has, one can’t imagine life without the internet anymore.
Berners-Lee further said that “For me, the best bit about the web has been the spirit of collaboration. While I do not make predictions about the future, I sincerely hope its use, knowledge, and potential will remain open and available to us all to continue to innovate, create and initiate the next technological transformation, that we cannot yet imagine”.
The NFT is aptly named “This Changed Everything” and is being auctioned by international art broker Sotheby’s in London. The auction will remain open from June 23 to June 30. The bidding starts at $1,000 and the money made will go to the initiatives supported by Berners-Lee and his wife, Rosemary Leith.
