Tim Berners-Lee World Wide Web source code to be auctioned as NFT
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The original source code for the World Wide Web written by British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee will go up for sale as a non-fungible token (NFT) at an online Sotheby’s auction.
Bids for the digitally signed Ethereum blockchain NFT will start at just $1,000 during the auction titled This Changed Everything and set to run from June 23 to June 30.
NFTs are digital files underpinned by blockchain technology – the same technology on which popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum rest. But unlike cryptocurrencies, an NFT is totally unique and the blockchain ledger it sits on verifies who the rightful owner is of that one-of-a-kind item.
The NFT of Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web code includes four elements: the original time-stamped files containing the source code he wrote; a moving visualisation of nearly 10,000 lines of code; a letter written by Berners-Lee describing the code and the process of creating it; and a digital “poster” of the full code he created from the original files using the programming language Python, according to a Sotheby’s press release.
Berners-Lee was working at Europe’s physics research centre CERN when he presented his idea, titled Mesh at the time and later to be known as the World Wide Web. His boss’s feedback? “Vague but exciting”.
Three decades after the vision was first presented on one server and one website, there are over 1.7 billion websites connecting 4.6 billion people, according to Sotheby’s.
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Personally I would have apologized for handing over the Pandora's Box keys to over 4.6 billion people.
Fascinating stuff. I suppose that I'll need by gold card to start bidding on it.