By Nelson Ikechukwu Nworie
Jimmy Wales, an American entrepreneur and co-founder and promoter of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia, has announced that his first-ever Wiki page edit would be sold as NFT.
Consequently, the internet entrepreneur has partnered with an online auction site called Christie to sell the newly minted digital token. This token is a special edition strawberry iMac used to launch the first-ever Wikipedia.
NFT, which stands for Non-Fungible Tokens, enables users to own rare digital artifacts through the blockchain network that backs cryptocurrencies. All forms of art, tweets, music, GIFs and, more digital assets can be owned through NFT.
His NFT not only allows one to capture what they see on the website but also gives them the right to interact with the website in a new way. Anyone who buys the NFT has the option of making edits and variations to “Hello World!” and reverting their changes if desired.
Wales is auctioning off a valuable piece of Internet history – Strawberry iMac, which he used to develop Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that revolutionized communication over the web. Christie is a well-known auction house handling the auction, which will remain open for bidding until December 15.
This announcement followed the footstep of Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and CEO of Square, who minted his first-ever tweet as NFT and sold it for 2.9 million US dollars in cryptocurrency.
“A portion of the sale proceeds would be used to support the developmentof an advertiser-free social network; that aims to find a healthier and nontoxic alternative with existing social networks by using a donation-only advertising-free model, as well as to donate money to charities working in the free culture world,” Wales said.
Wales intends to contribute the revenues from the NFT sale to Wikipedia, which is currently run by a non-profit named the Wikimedia Foundation. The funds will be shared between charity and Wales’ next endeavour, WT.social, a paid social networking site.
