⚠️ Attention: This post is an April Fools' Day joke. Please consume it at your own risk. We will not distribute any Solidity NFTs in the foreseeable future. Stay safe.
Today, we are excited to announce a little surprise we’ve been working on silently for the last couple of weeks. We heard that you really like crypto-related collectibles and we listened.
You will soon be able to own a digital piece of Solidity’s history: We’re tokenizing each Solidity version as an NFT! 🥳
Every release will be minted exactly one time only and hence will be truly unique. You’ll be able to bid on each version’s NFT. The means collected from this process will go into a dedicated pool which will be used to fund Solidity-related development that the owner of the NFTs, will be able to vote on (more on this below!).
If you’re as excited about this initiative as we are and curious to learn more, have a look at the short FAQ we compiled for you!
How can I get Solidity collectibles of previous versions?
We are first going to mint all previous versions of Solidity. Since we shipped quite a lot of releases throughout the last 6 years, the auctioning process will be conducted in several tranches.
Each week, another tranche of NFTs will be released for bidding. Auctions will run for one week.
- Solidity 0.1.x - 0.3.x (16 versions): April 5, 2021
- Solidity 0.4.x (27 versions): April 12, 2021
- Solidity 0.5.x (18 versions): April 19, 2021
- Solidity 0.6.x (13 versions): April 26, 2021
- Solidity 0.7.x (7 versions): May 3, 2021
- Solidity 0.8.x (4 versions): May 10, 2021
- Solidity 0.9.x (3 versions): May 17, 2021
In total, there are 88 previous Solidity versions, which will be minted as an NFT (including the current version of Solidity, which is Solidity 0.9.2).
Will upcoming versions be tokenized?
Yes, upcoming Solidity versions will be tokenized as well! For upcoming versions of Solidity we will include the NFT minting and selling process into the release process and will share the respective auction link alongside the release announcement on Twitter.
Which Solidity version NFT should I choose?
You can take a few data points into consideration when choosing your Solidity collectible:
- Do you have a favorite Solidity version or do you have an emotional connection to one of them (e.g. the first version you got started with, the version that implemented a feature you wanted)?
- You can browse through the Solidity release page on GitHub and check the release notes. Some versions fixed important bugs and others added great new features! In the bigger picture, some versions will appear more and some less relevant.
- Breaking releases (0.x.0 ones) could be considered special.
- The first releases might be considered special due to their historical relevance.
- Versions like 0.4.0 where we introduced a serious bug and created a fixing release the next day may also be considered special.
What will the Solidity version collectibles look like?
The image connected to the Solidity version collectibles will come with a different style for every version series. The styles will be revealed with every new tranche going live. Since the artistic aspect is not at the center of this collectible please expect them to be rather clean. It’s about owning a piece of history of Solidity and a governance experiment after all! :)
How can I be sure that this is the real NFT and not a copycat or scam?
Especially when trading on the secondary market, please always verify the origin of the collectible! You can easily do that by checking the history of the NFT and verifying that the initial owner of the NFT was the official Solidity collectible address. The address will be cross-shared over various Solidity channels and in the Solidity GitHub repository before the auction of the first tranche. In the future, solc --collectible-address will also output that address.
Additionally, to leverage the synergies between multiple technologies, we decided to go for a cross-chain validation and verification process to make the NFTs extra secure. We didn’t shy away from efforts nor costs and are proud to share that the Solidity version collectibles will be cross-verified on no less than five (5) blockchains. (Actually, one of them is technically not a “real” blockchain, but who cares!)
What will I be able to do with a Solidity NFT?
Inspired by recent governance and voting experiments like sybil.org and POAP.vote we would like to give the Solidity version collectibles a special purpose and allow NFT holders to decide over the usage of the funds raised via the NFT auctions. The funds shall be used for Solidity-related development or community work, which is not directly involved with the Solidity compiler, but is closely related to it. Examples for such efforts include work on tools, libraries, but could also be educational resources like creating a “Tour of Solidity” or tutorials.
We are currently evaluating different existing governance platforms and are open to proposals.
Where will I be able to bid on a Solidity NFT?
The auction platform link and details about the contract will be released with the first tranche of collectibles. Please be patient and do not bid on anything unless you were able to cross-verify the contract on the Solidity Twitter account, on the Solidity blog and in the Solidity Github repository.
What’s up next?
As a next step on our tokenization and decentralization journey we are considering selling warnings! We assigned numeric values to the errors already which paved the way for individually minting and selling Solidity error NFTs.
Owning a warning will allow you to set the warning text. In addition to that, only the owner will be able to disable the warning in the compiler.
Follow us on Twitter to not miss the alpha leak! 😉