[Nhcoll-l] VEROs

[Samuel Bolton]

Dear all,



Please see the link below to a paper on the use of non-fungible tokens
(NFTs) to help 3D digitize natural history collections. This email is to
alert you to this potential funding mechanism.



https://www.mapress.com/mt/article/view/megataxa.6.2.2



NFTs are potentially important to us because we are one of the few
communities that can greatly benefit from 3D versions of our holdings. I
don't think the art history community is dealing with a mass extinction.
And every important piece of art has already been photographed. Moreover,
unlike the art history community, we are far short of the funds that we
need to do our jobs properly.



It is truly astonishing to see the sums of money that are being paid for
NFTs like CryptoPunks, largely because these things are rare rather than
genuinely good or even deliberate art (see post script). Perhaps we, as a
community, can add some quality to NFTs while also using them to fund an
important enterprise. More than 2 billion dollars were spent on NFTs during
the first quarter of 2021 alone. That is a lot of money for digitization.



Here is a link to a website we just developed to help explain the concept
of VEROs to a broader audience.



https://www.vero-nft.org/


Best wishes to you all,



Sam

(contact details on the above link)



P.S. Below is a link to CryptoPunk 7523. It is an NFT worth over 11 million
dollars? It’s not valuable because it is art (cryptopunks were originally
intended for a smartphone app). It is valuable because it is the only one
of 10,000 cryptopunks to be an alien (blue skin) that is sporting a
surgical mask. In other words, the investor who bought this bought it
because it is weird and one of a kind. There is plenty of weird and
wonderful in our collections, and a lot of it is one of a kind (e.g.,
holotypes).



https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2021/natively-digital-cryptopunk-7523/cryptopunk-7523
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