Associated Press launches NFT marketplace featuring its iconic images

‘NFT’ the acronym standing for the non-fungible token is currently the buzz word going forward. At least the buzzword we’ve heard over and over again in the past 12 months. As big as 2021 has been for non-fungible tokens, industry players expect 2022 to be even bigger for it. The arrival of regulation may place certain limits on the NFT sector this year. But the sequence of big corporations looking to jump on the bandwagon will help it to expand regardless.

Growing adoption

The Associated Press will launch a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace built by blockchain technology provider Xooa. A blockchain infrastructure platform specializing in building “white-label NFT marketplaces for brands and IP owners.”

Here collectors will be able to purchase tokenized photographs from the global news platform. It will feature photography by current and former AP photojournalists. Thereby, it’ll have a selection of digitally enhanced depictions of their work. “Pulitzer Prize-winning AP images will be included,” the official press release added.

Starting on 31 January, the collection will be released over several weeks for varying prices, according to the marketplace’s website.  Meanwhile, photographs of subjects like space, climate, and war from AP photojournalists will feature in the aforementioned development.

Here’s one of them:

Source: AP

The photographs will be minted as NFTs on the Ethereum layer-two scaling network, Polygon. The platform will support secondary transactions using debit or credit cards, and payments in Ethereum.

Support: Collectors of all levels will be able to seamlessly buy, sell and trade official AP digital collectibles through the marketplace.

“It will support secondary market transactions and purchases using credit card payments as well as crypto wallets, including MetaMask, with support for Fortmatic, Binance, and Coinbase to come,” the blog added.

Ergo, offering collectors awareness of the time, date, location, equipment and technical settings used for the shot.

All good here

Dwayne Desaulniers, AP director of blockchain and data licensing noted:

“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.”

Head of marketplaces at Xooa, Zach Danker-Feldman, said the partnership will serve as a “powerful connection between the virtual world and the real world.”

Not-for-profit…?

The platform has mentioned that it will allow secondary market sales and that it will charge a hefty 10% fee. This flies in the face of the ‘not-for-profit’ news agency tag it bears. However, according to an announcement from the AP, funds from the NFT sales will go back into funding AP journalism.

Indeed an interesting aspect. Especially looking at how a non-profit news co-op is charging a massive fee.

Having said that, this wasn’t its first experience with cryptocurrencies. In October 2021, AP partnered with Chainlink Labs to ensure any data from its U.S newspaper and broadcaster members would be cryptographically verified.