0rlaDev

Few months ago I decided to start creating a NFT collection (NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token). I am very passionate about the world of cryptocurrencies and DeFi in general so I decided to get into this new trend which definitely reached its highest point when a NFT by Mike Winkelmann (in art Beeple) has been auctioned for $69 million. (see this article).

Nyan Cat, sold for 300 ETH (about $590,000) in an online auction.

Ok, but what the heck are even NFTs?

If you are not new to the cryptocurrencies world, you might know that Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency. Also the "Ether" (the Ethereum coin) is a cryptocurrency. Actually, the number of different cryptocurrencies circulating in the DeFi (Decentralized Finance) market is around 4.000 as 2021. This definitely highlights the hype behind this new "fully decentralized" world.

NFTs are a relatively new concept in the DeFi world. Think about Bitcoin for example: if you trade 1 BTC for 1 BTC you will have exactly the same thing... 1 BTC! Same exact value. For NFTs things are different. Non-fungible tokens are unique and indivisible. Basically, if you create an NFT, you create something which can't be replaced with something else. And what is more, is that they are all digitally signed, meaning that their existence on the blockchain impedes counterfeiting. Imagine like a Picasso, which not only is a very valuable and a unique piece of art, but also, cannot be counterfeit!

NFTs can really be anything digital (drawings, music, your recorded voice and so on). However, the current excitement which recently gained momentum, is behind selling digital art. There are many different places online where you can go, setup your wallet, buy some cryptocurrency (like Ether) and start buying digital art. Some of them are opensea.io, rarible.com and makersplace.com.

If you buy a NFT digital art, you become the exclusive owner of that piece. Only if you decided to sell it would allow someone else to become the new owner. Like every other token, buying a NFT means storing it somehow in your digital wallet. However, keep in mind that owning a piece of digital art does not gives you full rights on that piece, the author will always be able to claim an NFT as its creation. Consider the case where Van Gogh decides to sell you a painting he made. You become the owner but the creator still remains Van Gogh.

If you'd like to learn more about NFTs, please check my other article about NFTs. Furthermore, I suggest you to go and check this great article which does a really good job explaining what tokens are in general, the differences with NFTs and the concept of the Ethereum Blockchain standards and smart contracts. (I advise you, this might become a bit technical if you are new to this concepts). And if you want some background history about NFTs, check here.

Introducing CryptoCodes NFTs

So I was wondering: what could be something valuable that not only has a value as a piece of digital art, but also, has an intrinsic value which makes it unique somehow?

And the straight answer for me is... "of course code!"

If you think about it...a piece of code, it is not only something written to instruct a machine to do something but it is a piece of art written by someone.

If you took two programmers and you let them solve a coding challenge like "Remove duplicates from sorted array", no matter what, you would end with two different solutions of the same problem. No matter how similar their approach might look like, the mixture of variables' names, order, spaces, tabs, function arguments and comments in code would never be the same. It might be similar but, the chances of the two results being completely identical...are pretty low (unless they peek at each other 👀 )

So what does it mean?...how come something like code could not be defined as art? Of course it can!

Meet CryptoCodes

I decided to create a simple collection of NFTs named CryptoCodes.

But wait...code? In general? Of course not.

Do you have an idea of how much code is written every day? Around 92 billions lines of code!

I needed something very special...and if you think about it, technology as we know right now, would have never existed without people who wrote pieces of code that changed the history of computer science and humanity in general forever.

Think about the following questions:

• What would the world be like if we hadn't gone to the moon?
• How would you interact with a computer without a Microsoft, Apple, or Linux operating system?
• How would you find the fastest route from your home to the nearest market on Google Maps without complex Graphs algorithms?

For this reason, I decided to celebrate some of the most famous and important people, code snippets and algorithms which started a revolution to change the world, with a serie of collectibles.

So transforming a line of code into and NFT results in?

A unique piece of art which made the history of computer science and humanity.

You can own one collectible and unlock very interesting content! If you want to learn more, check this link.