In Brief:
- A NFT marketplace in collaboration with Xooa will be launched by Associated Press on January 31.
- The NFTs are to be minted on the environmentally friendly Polygon blockchain.
- Collectors of all levels will be able to purchase, sell, and trade official AP digital collectibles.
- Proceeds from the marketplace will go toward funding the organization’s journalism.
The Associated Press (AP) has announced that a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace would be launched soon. The marketplace is being built by AP in collaboration with blockchain firm Xooa, and it plans to open on January 31. The collection will be released over several weeks.
According to the news organization, the system will be based on the “environmentally friendly” Polygon blockchain, and the NFTs will “feature a full collection of original metadata” that will tell customers when, where, and how the images were taken.
Its inaugural collection, which will debut on January 31st, will contain NFTs with shots of “space, environment, conflict, and other images to concentrate on the work of certain AP photographers,” according to the company.
“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. “With Xooa’s technology, we are proud to offer these tokenized pieces to a fast-growing global audience of photography NFT collectors.”
Through the NFT marketplace, collectors of all levels will be able to purchase, sell, and trade official AP digital collectibles. It will accept credit card payments for secondary market transactions as well as crypto wallets such as MetaMask, with support for Fortmatic, Binance, and Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) to follow.
There will be virtual lines to purchase NFTs when they are released by AP, with “Pulitzer Drops” containing more limited-edition NFTs occurring every two weeks — according to the FAQ, these photos will “have greater scarcity to protect their significance.”
The AP stated that because it is a non-profit organization, the revenues from the NFT sales will be used to fund its journalism. Associated Press photojournalists have won numerous prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize, for their work.
Last September, TIME magazine launched The ‘TIMEPieces’ NFT collection, which sold out within a minute of launching. Thus, it became the first NFT collection to be launched by a media organization.
