World Wide Web Source Code NFT That Sold For $5.4M Discovered To Have Errors
Image via Shutterstock
Earlier this week, Sotheby’s put up the World Wide Web’s original source code as a non-fungible token (NFT) for auction. The landmark code was written by British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee, and fetched a whopping US$5.4 million on the auction’s final day on June 30.
However, not long after news of the sale broke, a security researcher uncovered errors in the code. According to Gizmodo, Mikko Hypponen, a security researcher at IT security company F-Secure, spotted that the code flashed onscreen during the auction had wrongly-angled brackets.
“The NFT consists of multiple components, and the code seems to be fine everywhere else, but the video seems to have all the special characters encoded,” explained Hypponen.
Other developers chimed in, attributing the error to the software the auctioneers were using to pretend-type the code on during the video.
Despite the embarrassing error, many have speculated that the mistake could actually make the NFT more valuable.
“These NFT things are all about ‘owning a piece of internet history’. So could this ‘artifact’ actually be worth even more now because of the cock-up?” queried BBC reported Joe Tidy.
Proceeds from the sale of this NFT will go towards various charitable causes supported by Professor Berners-Lee and his wife, Rosemary Leith.
Hold on...the www source that Sotheby is auctioning? The angle brackets are wrong! They've been - yes - HTML encoded from "< >" to "< >". Lol. https://t.co/vb7clOETfU pic.twitter.com/kb1ugoPyok
— @mikko (@mikko) June 30, 2021
[via Gizmodo, cover image via Shutterstock]
Also check out these recent news
