Tim Berners-Lee, the developer of the World Wide Web, is auctioning the original source code for the web as a non-fungible token, Reuters reports. NFTs rely on blockchains to provide a certificate of authenticity for digital objects.
As NPR reports, the NFT includes files from 1990 and 1991 containing 9,555 lines of source code, the original HTML documents describing how to use it, an animated video of the code being written, and a letter from Berners-Lee.
"Why an NFT? Well, it's a natural thing to do ... when you're a computer scientist and when you write code and have been for many years," Berners-Lee says in a statement, according to Reuters. "It feels right to digitally sign my autograph on a completely digital artifact."
Bids for the web source code NFT are to start at $1,000, Reuters adds, and NPR notes that the proceeds are to go to as-yet-unnamed initiatives supported by Berners-Lee.
Other recent NFT announcements include George Church's genome and patent paperwork related to Nobel Prize-winning work at the University of California, Berkeley.