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Qubits reports | Official account QbitAI
Last month, the World Wide Web source code was publicly auctioned online:
That's right, the 9,555 lines of source code that formed the foundation of the modern Internet in 1990, provided by Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the Internet!
The NFT (non-homogeneous token) form of the auction item starts at only $1,000 and soars in price once released.
The final transaction price was as high as US$5.4 million (equivalent to RMB 34 million):
But before that, someone found a bug in the public code demo video:
Obviously there is a bug, but can it still be sold for such a high price?
Before you understand why, let's take a look at what's in this lot.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="9" > "sell the Internet"</h1>
At the heart of the lot is a source code file containing the original implementation of HTML, HTTP, and URIs, with a timestamp.
In addition, there is a 30-minute video of the coding demonstration, a letter written by the father of the Internet explaining the code creation process, and a "code poster" in SVG format (with Tim's vector signature in the lower right corner):
On December 25, 1990, Tim Berners and another French researcher implemented communication with a server for the first time with an HTTP proxy based on Web principles.
Subsequently, the technology was rapidly spread to the world.
But Tim did not apply for intellectual property rights to the World Wide Web at the time, and he did not take anything.
And 30 years later, the 66-year-old father of the Internet took out the source code into an NFT again.
He said:
Whether it's a work of art or a digital art like this, NFTs are the latest game-changing creations in the field and the most appropriate form of ownership available.
Just like the code, the video, the image above... We can all sum it up as digital products.
NFTs, on the other hand, are a virtual token that proves ownership of assets in the immaterial world and measures their market value.
Netizens lamented that the father of the Internet finally received "patent fees 30 years late", and was shocked by the rapid rise in the price of this NFT-form auction item.
But at this time, suddenly someone stood up and said: Your source code seems to be a little wrong...
The researchers found from the 30-minute video of the coding demonstration that the corner brackets in the code < and > replaced by < and >.
And someone in the comments section also posted other similar errors in the actual code:
However, there is nothing wrong with the svg format code poster:
Neither the auction house nor Tim himself responded to this mistake.
The next day, the auction house announced that the digital artwork in the form of an NFT had been successfully auctioned at a high price.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="27" > lots containing bugs</h1>
It was found that in a later public demo video, the erroneous code had been corrected:
But here comes a problem.
Unlike homogeneous tokens such as NFTs and Bitcoin, they can neither be divided into smaller tokens nor interchangeable, but can only exist as a unique single whole.
Each of these non-homogeneous tokens has a different value.
And now, there is clearly a "factually correct" version, as well as another version with a "unique history" of error.
So which version did the bidder who spent $5.4 million get?
Which of the two versions of NFT, one new and one old, is more valuable?
It has been stated that:
Maybe people will realize that NFTs are just and stop buying it? ...... My assessment of NFTs is the same as other virtual currencies – only the value that people give, not intrinsic value.
However, in the world of collecting, it is not uncommon for examples to be more valuable because of errors.
For example, in a stamp issued by the United States on May 10, 1918, the pattern of the Curtis Jenny-4 aircraft in the stamp was reversed due to a typographical error:
It was precisely because of the printing error that the price of this stamp soared.
In 2005, an American financier bought four of these inverted Jenny stamps for $2.97 million.
And now, what if bidders get a completely correct piece of world wide web source code, but the wrong version of the old NFT hasn't been destroyed?
The auction house, which holds the old version, may be sitting on a token worth more than $5.4 million.
Reference Links:
[1]https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/video-of-berners-lees-5-4m-nft-hints-another-exists-with-an-error/
[2]https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/06/tim-berners-lee-makes-an-nft-from-world-wide-webs-objective-c/
This NFT courtesy of Tim Berners-Lee:
https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2021/this-changed-everything-source-code-for-www-x-tim-berners-lee-an-nft/source-code-for-the-www
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