Sir Tim Berners-Lee, one of the architects of the World Wide Web, is selling the source code to the original web browser as an NFT. The work will be offered at Sotheby’s auction called “This Changed Everything” which will begin on June 23 through the end of the month with a starting bid of $1000. Sotheby’s has not designated an estimate for the work, though its final sale price is likely to far exceed its starting bid.
According to a press release from Sotheby’s, the proceeds will benefit causes supported by Berners-Lee and his wife.
The time-stamped files being sold contain 9,550 lines of original programming code Berners-Lee wrote. That code has since served as the foundational structures of the internet: Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Universal Document Identified (URI). Alongside the files, a Python-backed digital “poster,” which serves as a visualization of the source code and comprises the inventor’s digital signature, will be auctioned. An additional letter penned by Berners-Lee detailing his 1989 creation, which he made while working at CERN, a physics research lab in Switzerland, will also go to the winning bidder.
Though Berners-Lee’s code has been open source since 1993, two years after the first webpage supported by his code went live, the auction represents the chance “to own the ultimate digitally-born artefact,” Hatton said. This version of the source code is an unique NFT that is valuable as a collector’s item as its one of a kind to be offered at an auction.
“Three decades ago, I created something which, with the subsequent help of a huge number of collaborators across the world, has been a powerful tool for humanity,” Berners-Lee said in a press statement. The scientist, who also serves as the chief technology officer at Boston data startup Inrupt, said that an NFT is the “ideal” format and “the most appropriate means of ownership that exists” for his game-changing invention.