South China Morning Post(SCMP) has launched a non-fungible token (NFT) standard to record historical records on the blockchain.
The newspaper introduced “ARTIFACTS”, a standardized model for recording accounts of history and historical assets on the blockchain as NFTs.
“The Post believes that factual accounts of history and authentic historical assets should be immutable, and that ownership of these digitised and tokenized assets, which are part of our collective human experience, should be decentralised,” the announcement said.
The news outlet, owned by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, plans to mint a collection of NFTs from its 118-year-old archives of historical moments, and aims to create greater value from its “first draft of history.” The organization did not specify which blockchains or platforms it would create, sell and trade its NFTs on.
The venture will harness “a few selected blockchains” the SCMP has yet to identify. The plan is for ARTIFACT to eventually be chain-agnostic.
“The South China Morning Post is committed to engaging and educating a global audience with information and technology,” said Gary Liu, SCMP CEO. “Blockchain offers immense potential to immutably preserve journalism that witnesses and explains history. The ‘ARTIFACT’ project is an opportunity to discover, collect, showcase, trade, and reanimate meaningful moments and objects from our collective human experience and we are excited to introduce this standard to the world.”
