The Anhui Museum and the Xuzhou Museum began to collect in the meta-universe

Some time ago, while the "ice pier" was sought after, some people were also frantically robbing the "digital collection".

On the first day of the Lunar New Year, Quzhou, Zhejiang Province, released the digital collection "Quzhou City Classic", which was only 4 minutes and 41 seconds on the line, and 666 sets of 3996 digital collections were sold out; on February 10, the Xuzhou Museum launched the S-shaped jade dragon pendant and the "Wanqu HouXuan" turtle button gold seal, which sold out 20,000 copies in 3 seconds; earlier on January 20, the Anhui Museum issued three digital collections of dragon and tiger pattern drum seats, Zhang Chengzao cloud pattern lacquer boxes, and Ejun Qijin Festival, which were also "snatched in seconds".

What is a digital collection? Why is it so sought after? Why are local governments and museums coming in?

The under-35 group is the main force

Digital collections are often associated with Another noun, NFT, which has been in vogue since last year. As the first hot word of 2021 selected by collins Dictionary, NFT, or "non-homogeneous token", is a way to apply blockchain technology to the assetization of digital content, with the characteristics of indivisibility, confirmability and uniqueness. In terms of specific representation, an NFT is an object that only exists in the virtual world, such as a JPG image, a 3D model, or even an emoji.

Launched on February 1, "Quzhou City Classics" was titled "The First Urban NFT Digital Collection in China", with six digital collections including Six Picture Files including Quzhou City Brand Logo and Quzhou Yudong Peasant Paintings, while the digital collections of the two museums are 3D models of cultural relics in their collections.

Through blockchain technology, the NFT gives the virtual object a unique "identity card number", so although in theory a picture, a model or an emoji can be downloaded by anyone to their computer and mobile phone, the person who holds the NFT is the real owner of the picture, the model or the emoji.

Zhang Fan (pseudonym) works for a blockchain technology platform enterprise in China. As a senior industry insider, he believes that although the technical principle of the current domestic digital collection is basically the same as that of the NFT, there are significant differences between the digital collections at home and abroad: "The biggest difference is that the domestic digital collections are not tradable at this stage. Last March, the NFT work "Every Day: The First 5,000 Days" sold for $69.34 million at Christie's, becoming a landmark event in the NFT hype.

Since the concept was born, digital collections, or NFTs, have been highly bound to the metacosm. "Digital collections are scarce and at the same time confirmable. Collecting a digital collection in the metaverse, like collecting a famous painting or an antique in the real world, is the embodiment of wealth and taste, and is a capital that can be displayed or even shown off. Zhang Fan explained.

"Just like the popular Ultraman card among children, it may be just a piece of cardboard in the eyes of adults, but children can use it to fight and exchange, and in fact it has become a social currency among children." Zhang Fan said. Based on this, the youth group is currently the main force of digital collectors. Zhang Fan said that according to the statistics of the platform he works for, most of the users' ages are concentrated under the age of 35: "Whether they intend to speculate or really agree with the value of digital collections, people who devote themselves to them believe that digital collections have huge imagination space in the future." ”

The "out of the loop" effect is unexpected

The imagination space of the future makes digital collections another popular track in the field of domestic Internet. This year's wave of digital collection distribution is booming, with a clear official background.

For example, the digital collection launched by Quzhou this time is planned by the Quzhou Cultural Highland Golden Business Card and City Brand Work Class. Zheng Qijie, the relevant person in charge of the special class, told reporters that the purpose of launching the "Quzhou City Classic" digital collection is to publicize and promote the Quzhou city brand and let more people know About Quzhou. "We don't know much about NFTs, but we firmly believe it's a new form of urban propaganda." Zheng Qijie admitted that in order to strive for greater publicity effect, at the beginning of the planning, they set their goal to win the title of "the first city digital collection", "from the early planning to the final appearance, it took less than 1 month before and after."

"All the collections were snatched up in less than 5 minutes, and the number of views on related pages was '100,000+'" in a short period of time." Zheng Qijie expressed satisfaction with the effectiveness of this promotion.

Zheng Qijie said that Quzhou will continue to use digital collections and even the concept of meta-universe in the future to continue to promote the promotion of city brands, and they are cooperating with a company in Shanghai to intend to move the Festival of Kong in September this year to the "Meta-Universe".

In order to promote the brand image of the city, the museum also has its own considerations. "The sale of this digital collection is to promote the Chinese culture brand of our Xuzhou Museum online and open up the thick history in a young way." Li Xiaojun, director of the Xuzhou Museum, told reporters that he believes that digital collections are also an important opportunity for the development of the cultural tourism industry. Since the outbreak of the epidemic, the flow of visitors to museums has decreased, the offline sales of physical cultural and creative products have been affected, and digital collections can also make up for the shortcomings of offline sales and stimulate cultural tourism consumption. According to reports, this year, Xuzhou Museum will also launch 8 digital collections.

Cheng Kai of the Cultural and Creative Department of the Anhui Museum told reporters that the sale of the digital collection has been preparing for about 4 months, and the digital collection platform provides technology and the museum provides the content. "Museums generally have 3D modeling of cultural relics in their collections, and we need to modify the model according to their platform parameter specifications, with text, audio and other content, and the platform side provides model testing to present the final effect, if both parties are satisfied." Cheng Kai said that the launch of the museum's digital collection is a concrete manifestation of culture + technology: "The use of the results brought by science and technology to enrich the communication of traditional culture, so that more people can learn from passive to active acceptance and participate in the dissemination of traditional culture." Cheng Kai frankly said that their original intention is to amplify the social effect, hoping to explore a new way of communication that combines the market and pleases the people.