Consensus 2022: NFTs to safeguard Ukrainian cultural DNA
As the Consensus 2022 comes to an end, the Blockchain Community has a lot to introspect and reflect on while gearing up for the bigger picture ahead. Key decisions were taken regarding crypto usage, the crypto market, and market structure. Part of the plans put in place touches on the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. The war, which started on the 24th of February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine has ravaged the Ukrainian soil and now seems to ravage its arts and historical relics.
According to the President of the Blockchain Association of Ukraine, Michael Chobanian, who in his statement recounts: “Right now, museums and cultural sites are being destroyed by rockets,”
This poses the severe danger of extinction of Ukrainian relics, architectural marvels, and museums. The move is to digitize the country’s pieces of art by NFT-ization. This move was announced on Saturday at the annual Consensus 2022
The Ukraine government, which already employed the use of cryptocurrency, and blockchain technology to support its finance since the invasion, has been able to generate about $135million from donations since May. A further move to safeguard its culture and relics through NFTs would be leveraging fully the benefits that come with Cryptocurrency and Blockchain technology.
Furthermore, the initiative wasn’t and has no government backing, but an initiative birthed by the Ukrainian Blockchain Community and has already started getting partnership hints. The first project to partner with Ukraine’s historic NFT-ization initiative was the NEAR protocol. Illia Polosukhin, the co-founder of the protocol who was present on stage during the Saturday meeting at the Consensus 2022 made this revelation.
How can NFTs preserve relics and Culture?
As we should know, NFTs are non-fungible tokens. They possess a unique set of data stored on the blockchain, this makes them immutable and distinct. That’s to say, they can sustain sole proof of ownership.
This, therefore, means that these relics, artifacts, and cultural pieces would go through a digitalization process and the data it contains are now tied to digital images to preserve the item forever even after the original item has been destroyed.
The Blockchain Association of Ukraine’s President made the announcement in the company of Alex Bornyakov, Ukraine’s deputy minister for Digital Transformation.
Further explaining the idea and importance of the project, Polosukhin said: “It is extremely important to bring all the Ukrainian heritage on-chain and offer it to the world and preserve it forever,”
