Web source code NFT sold at $5.4m

Anirudh Murthy

July 1, 2021

NFTs are certificates of ownership for digital assets, with most of them not having a physical representation. They do not necessarily include copyright control and hence it is regarded as a get-rich-quick scheme by critics. Recently the World Wide Web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee sold the NFT in an auction to an unidentified buyer, at $5.4m. Four different items were part of this NFT: time-stamped files of the source code, an animated video of the code being written, a letter from Sir Tim, and a digital poster of the code, created by Sir Tim himself. The sale surpassed the $2.9m spent on Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first tweet. Sir Tim created the World Wide Web by connecting different pieces of information on the early internet through hyperlinks. He also built the first web browser and web server. When the auction was announced he stated that the core codes and protocols on the web are royalty-free. That meant that there would be no need to start paying money to follow links. Selling the NFT is like selling a picture made with a Python program of what the source code would look like if it was stuck on the wall and signed by Tim. The reason this NFT has such a high value is because it is the only signed copy of the code for the first web browser in existence.

Abridged fromBBC