Bart Simpson style: a young man sells his “soul” like an NFT

NFTs have become one of the topics of the moment. Drawings, articles, memes, tweets and up to pixels have become non-fungible tokens that are traded at any cost. And there seems to be no end to the imagination: a 21-year-old sold “his soul” as an NFT.

It should be remembered that NFTs or non-fungible tokens are certificates of ownership stored on a blockchain and backed by blockchain technology (for example, Ethereum) that are usually associated with a digital asset, such as visual arts, videos, music or collectibles.

The protagonist of this story is Stijn van Schaik, an art student who published his peculiar offer on OpenSea, a well-known marketplace for these assets, and soon gained a buyer.

Thus, Soul of Stinus (the name he christened the NFT) was auctioned for 0.11 Weth (Wrapped Ether), which is equivalent to about 377 dollars. The transfer was recorded on the Polygon blockchain. The new owner keeps the supply of this asset and new offers could come in. In fact, in the last few hours a user offered 0.15 ETH (USD 492.15) to acquire this token.

This whole situation refers to the famous episode of The Simpsons in which Bart sells his soul to Milkhouse for five dollars. At that time there were no non-fungible tokens: the transaction is sealed on a piece of paper that says “The Soul of Bart Simpson”.

“Hello person, you are currently looking at a soul. It's mine for now. Once it's fully loaded onto the blockchain, who knows what will happen. What does it mean for a soul to be decentralized? Let's find out.” That is the caption that appears in OpenSea, next to the photo that represents the soul of Stinus.

This entire transaction is also accompanied by a contract that is published. The agreement has several points that are, at least striking, like the operation itself. One of the first points, which refers to the description of the NFT itself, reads the following:

“The `Soul' of Stinus for the purposes of this contract is understood as the immortal, spiritual and immaterial essence of his self that exists independently and differently from his material being.”

It is further clarified as follows: “While both Buyer and Stinus acknowledge that the true nature, scope and existence of such a soul exists or does not exist, since it is something unknown and unknowable to either of them, the ambiguity involved in no way limits or invalidates any part of this agreement, and the scope total of the Soul shall be considered subject to the agreement”.

How to create and sell an NFT

There are different platforms for creating an NFT. One of the most used, and also free, is Opensea. Once the site was entered, you should press the “Create” option located in the upper right margin. Once that is done, the system will ask that it be linked with a wallet or wallet. There are several options, including MetaMask, which is one of the most used.

The next step is to upload the file that you want to convert to NFT. This file can be an image, video, GIF, etc. Then a description, name and a link will have to be generated so that users can see additional information about the product being offered.

The most important point is to choose which blockchain the NFT is to be minted on. Ethereum is often recommended although there are other alternatives such as Polygon, which is free. If Ethereum is chosen, a gas fee will have to be paid, as is called the fee that users pay miners on a blockchain protocol in order for their transaction to be included in the block.

Once this is done, the creation of the NFT was finalized and the next step is to put it up for sale. It can be sold on OpenSea or other marketplaces such as Mint, for example. If you choose to market it on OpenSea then you have to follow these steps:

You enter OpenSea.io, go to the user profile, select the NFT you want to market and press the button that says “sell”. A price is then set, which can be fixed or an auction and sets a time during which that sale will be available. Opensea charges a 2.5% commission on the sale made.

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