Exploring NFTs for Written Works

This can be a submit that I wrote again in 2021 on the peak of the NFT mania. The essence of it nonetheless holds true in my thoughts which is why I made a decision to share it this week. A number of the tasks talked about might have burned (similar to Jack Dorsey’s tweet), however the concept nonetheless resonates with me.

NFTs nonetheless have to mature to the purpose the place while you say NFT, folks don’t take into consideration frothy overpriced JPG pictures, however as a substitute a digital asset that represents one thing tangible. Writing might be not thrilling sufficient to offer that change, however it’s enjoyable to consider what might be accomplished, as I unpack beneath.

The web is awash with concepts and knowledge that folks talk in textual content and visible codecs, and we noticed an enormous explosion in 2021 of NFTs for digital artwork spanning pixelated pictures similar to Nyan Cat at one finish of the spectrum to Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5000 on the different.

However one thing that has but to be popularised is NFTs for the phrases folks have written on a web page. Stephen King stated that writing is the purest type of artwork—you are attempting to seize ideas in your head and externalise them in prose earlier than they vanish again into the neural pathways from wherever they got here, doubtlessly gone eternally. This leads me to query why anybody isn’t already doing this.

Textual content within the written type might properly lend itself to NFTs of:

articles

poems

brief tales

novels

concepts

There may be already an extremely buoyant marketplace for first editions of books, so certainly there are collectors who can be interested by proudly owning the primary manuscript of books by well-established authors.

Much more powerfully, when somebody has what they consider to be a breakthrough or revolutionary concept, why not create an NFT of this thought on the web page? In some respects that is analogous to making a commerce mark or patent, however with out the necessity to work with a 3rd occasion. Somebody can merely seize their concept, create an NFT of it, after which forevermore show that they have been the primary individual to seize the concept.

There have been some associated concepts for text-based NFTs which can be being created. Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Twitter offered an NFT of his first ever Tweet lately for $2.9m, which was signed by him just about along with his personal key. Additionally, Ethereum developer Nick Johnson has began creating Amulets that are brief (64 characters or much less) sentences which when hashed exhibit sure properties, saved as an NFT.

There may be the Mirror platform which tokenises items by authors whereby people can put money into an article or story proposal by an writer, after which as soon as written have fractional possession of the completed piece. Simon de la Rouviere has additionally offered some ideas.

Nonetheless, my view is that we are able to go each larger and less complicated—we want an NFT format that helps any enter textual content file, it might be a small tweet-length piece, a brief story or perhaps a novel. Like how with the present crop of artwork NFTs, the asset in query is a picture file, for textual content, the asset in query needs to be a textual content file.

Simply think about in case you might have an NFT of the Bitcoin Whitepaper signed by Satoshi, or the unique Ethereum Whitepaper signed by Vitalik, or the primary draft of a novel written by Stephen King, Neal Stephenson or J.Ok. Rowling, these are true collector’s gadgets. Nevertheless it extends extra broadly. This submit is being authored in Markdown, so I can create an NFT of it to seize this concept being written at supply.

Entering into the specifics—how do you choose a format for the supply textual content of those NFTs? If we wish to maintain as near the supply as attainable—the typewriter equal, and the supply work is simply phrases, I might argue that is Markdown.

Markdown is already very broadly utilized in writing circles and most of the main fashionable writing toolchains present first-class assist for it – Scrivner, Ulysses and iaWriter which this submit is being written. In utilizing Markdown, not solely are you utilizing a format that has simplicity at its coronary heart, which may simply be rendered into PDF, HTML, Phrase or Google Docs, Latex and lots of different broadly used codecs; however you’re additionally capturing the phrases in what might be thought-about as near a uncooked format as attainable.

The great factor about Markdown is that, not like plain textual content, it offers simply sufficient formatting to fulfill the wants of most writers—daring and italic emphasis, footnotes, headings, numbered and unnumbered lists.

If Markdown will not be attainable because the uncooked format comprises diagrams or extra refined markup, then PDF is a possible candidate as it’s already essentially the most broadly used digital format for paperwork on the internet. Though initially a proprietary format from Adobe, it transitioned into being an open commonplace in 2008, so offers a smart commonplace for NFT paperwork, very similar to JPG and PNG do for pictures.

So that is all good in idea, however art-based NFTs are visible and folks can present their possession, this doesn’t work with a textual content file. Moreover, what if they’ve footage, pictures or charts that should be represented? These are all legitimate concerns.

PDF is an open format that might be used, nonetheless, like with visible content material, a number of toolchains can be utilized to generate them, every producing a barely completely different digital doc. Whereas phrases in a markdown file might be thought-about the knowledge coming straight from the writer of their rawest type (fortuitously with out the entire typos).

No matter which format is used, creating NFTs of this work might be thought-about a type of mental property registration utilizing the blockchain. When somebody creates a brand new work in any format and generates an NFT of it, they’ve a method wherein they will show they have been the unique individual to register that IP, which for inventive people is a option to attribute concepts formally to themselves.

However we mustn’t lose sight of the truth that concepts are only one a part of the broader technique of innovation, how folks select to execute these concepts is what turns them right into a actuality, however at the very least you might be clear on the place they initially got here from.

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