In response to the city’s COVID-19-related lockdown, Shanghai residents
turned to the blockchain to preserve their experiences.
The city of Shanghai has been in a month-long mandated quarantine,
which confines its 25 million residents to their homes. Initially, the
latest COVID-19 outbreak began in March of this year and developed into
the worst infection zone since the beginning of the pandemic.
As
the virus infected hundreds of thousands of people, the extremely
restrictive lockdown prevented residents from leaving their homes for
weeks on end. In addition to the spike in infections, the lockdown
prevented people from obtaining food and medical treatment, and
introduced other austerities.
This led to frustrated citizens
taking to the internet for solidarity and venting. However, government
authorities have been reportedly censoring videos that surfaced on the internet showing scenes of confinement within Shanghai.
As
information stored on the blockchain is immutable, many have turned to
nonfungible token (NFT) minting in acts of combating and preserving
these experiences.
NFT utility continues to grow
On April 22, a video called Voices of April
was published on YouTube with voiceovers of experiences from Shanghai
residents during the lockdown. Shortly after it was published on
YouTube, it was minted into an NFT and listed on OpenSea.
According
to a comment to Reuters from a Shanghai-based programer, the
preservation of the video, which authorities tried to erase, is part of a
"people’s rebellion.”
As of Wednesday, over
2,300 items related to the video can be found on the OpenSea
marketplace. Moreover, hundreds of NFTs related to the lockdown in
Shanghai have since appeared. This includes additional voiceover videos
claiming to be from inside isolation camps and digital artwork depicting life under the lockdown.
Another Shanghai-based Twitter user tweeted his NFT creation of a screenshot of the Shanghai COVID map from late April.
This instance out of Shanghai reveals yet another use case and utility for NFT creation — namely, the preservation of digital artifacts against censorship.
Related: The NFT sector is projected to move around $800 billion over next 2 years: Report
China and crypto
The Chinese government has taken a hardened stance against digital assets, going as far as banning their trading domestically and forcing Bitcoin (BTC) miners to shut down their operations.
Though the country banned the usage of outside cryptocurrencies, it
still sees the underlying technology as useful. The central bank digital
currency (CBDC) of the government, the e-yuan, is currently in
real-world trials throughout the country. In three cities, residents can
use the e-yuan for tax payments. Meanwhile, it has been reported that the Chinese government may utilize blockchain and Web3 technologies for centralized development.
source link : https://cointelegraph.com/news/hundreds-of-nfts-listed-on-opensea-from-shanghai-residents-during-covid-lockdown
