The Associated Press [AP] is soon to launch a non-fungible token [NFT] marketplace built by blockchain technology provider Xooa, where collectors can purchase the news agency’s award-winning contemporary and historic photojournalism. According to the press release, the marketplace and first NFTs are set to go live on Monday, January 31, 2022.
At first, the collection will contain a compilation of photographs by current and former Associated Press photojournalists along with a selection of Pulitzer Prize-winning AP images. Dwayne Desaulniers, AP director of blockchain and data licensing stated,
For 175 years AP’s photographers have recorded the world’s biggest stories through gripping and poignant images that continue to resonate today. With Xooa’s technology, we are proud to offer these tokenized pieces to a fast-growing global audience of photography NFT collectors.
The announcement comes immediately after TronWeekly had reported the launch of LooksRare as a new NFT marketplace that also featured an airdrop of LOOKS tokens.
What is expected from Associated Press’s brand new NFT Marketplace?
As per the post, each NFT will feature a set of original metadata offering collectors awareness of the time, date, location, equipment, and technical settings used for the shot. NFTs will be from a gamut of areas like space, climate, war, and other images to spotlights on the work of specific AP photographers. As a not-for-profit news cooperative, proceeds would be used to fund factual, unbiased AP journalism.
In addition to that, all users will be able to seamlessly buy, sell and trade official AP digital collectibles through the marketplace. Apart from that, it will facilitate secondary market transactions and purchases using credit card payments as well as crypto wallets, including MetaMask. The platform is planning to add support for Fortmatic, Binance, and Coinbase in the near future.
It is to be noted that the NFTs will be minted on the Polygon blockchain, which as per the blog is an environmentally friendly, Ethereum-compatible layer two solution. The leading news agency has been dabbling with the NFT ecosystem for quite some time.
Previously on 19 October 2021, The Associated Press launched a premium NFT collection on the Binance NFT marketplace. Each NFT depicted the news agency’s historic news over the past 100 years, spotlighting an array of milestones in space, global conflicts, science, among other things.