Tim Berners-Lee, who gave us the web, is selling his code—as an NFT
Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, will sell the source code that made the first web browser work. The code–9,000 lines of it–will be sold as an NFT, or nonfungible token, in a Sotheby’s auction later this month.
NFTs are a form of digital currency that establish the sole ownership of a digital asset. They’re typically used to sell digital art, pieces of sports video memorabilia, and other digital collectibles, but can represent just about anything made of zeros and ones. The fact that NFTs establish “provenance,” or the ownership of a thing going back to the original creator, makes the currency well-suited to historical artifacts like Berners-Lee’s source code.
Whoever buys Berners-Lee’s NFT will get “the original time-stamped files containing the source code for the world wide web, digitally signed by Sir Tim,” Sotheby’s states in a release. “These are the list of commands he masterminded . . . the bare bones from which the web was born . . .”
The NFT also contains a digital poster featuring the whole 9,000 lines of code, and a letter from Berners-Lee about the creation of the World Wide Web.
