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The development of NFTs has unlocked new avenues for the monetization of all sorts of media, from music, to art, to sporting events. Now the Associated Press is getting in on the action by minting a series of photos from its 175-year archive, according to a statement published late Monday.
The AP will release its photography over a series of NFT drops beginning on Jan. 31, via a bespoke marketplace built by Xooa, a Denver-based blockchain and low-code application development company which promotes a variety of use cases for NFTs.
“For 175 years, AP’s photographers have recorded the world’s biggest stories through gripping and poignant images that continue to resonate today,” said Dwayne Desaulniers, AP director of blockchain and data licensing.
The collection is expected to feature a variety of images such as space, climate, and war and will feature the work of specific AP photographers.
Collectors will be able to purchase photos using both credit cards and digital asset wallets such as MetaMask, and proceeds from the NFT sales will be used to fund the not-for-profit news cooperative’s ongoing journalism operations, according to the statement.
Zach Danker-Feldman, Xooa’s head of marketplaces, elaborating on the upcoming launch, said in a statement that, for the AP marketplace, “emphasis has been placed on accessibility for all types of collectors to empower them to join a community that shares their interest in stunning photography.”
The marketplace’s FAQ cites “withdrawals to other marketplaces” among its “features coming soon,” implying that sales of AP NFTs on the secondary market will only be possible on Xooa initially, and not on other NFT venues such as OpenSea.
The AP marketplace will operate on the Polygon’s Ethereum-adjacent proof-of-stake (PoS) commit chain, which the AP touts as an “environmentally friendly Ethereum-compatible layer two solution.”
However, Ethereum layer-2 is generally defined as a scaling solution which inherits Ethereum’s security guarantees. The Polygon PoS chain — which is based on Cosmos’ Tendermint consensus — maintains its own validator set for security, and assets are locked in an upgradeable smart contract secured by a 5 of 8 multi-signature wallet. The network does checkpoint its state to Ethereum mainnet, which contributes to its security, but that means it will continue to rely on Ethereum’s electricity-burning proof-of-work mining system until the transition to proof-of-stake occurs later this year. This process would occur regardless of the specific activity on Polygon, so AP’s NFTs will not contribute to energy usage by Ethereum miners.
Polygon is also developing a variety of rollup-based layer-2 options using zero-knowledge proofs, but none of those is yet operational.
Neither AP nor Xooa representatives had replied to Blockworks request for comments at time of publication.
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