By blending future technology with Star Trek history, the living “El Primero” or “The First” NFT immortalizes an economic moment in sci-fi history.
Gene Roddenberry’s signature has boldly gone where no other NFT has gone before – into the code of existence itself.
Code of creation
Roddenberry negotiated a deal to finance Star Trek with Lucille Ball’s Desilu Productions in 1965.
On Nov. 30 — 30 years after the sci-fi legend’s death — the signature was transformed into a nonfungible token (NFT) and inserted into the DNA code of a living bacteria cell.
It’s the first-ever “Living Eco-NFT,” according to Roddenberry Entertainment, and a “real convergence of science and science fiction.”
With the division of the organism’s cells, the piece will duplicate and grow.
“As long as the bacteria is alive, the cell can double at a rate that produces over a billion copies of the Eco-NFT in a matter of hours,” Roddenberry Entertainment said.
It’ll be on display in Miami at Art Basel 2021 as an art piece dubbed “El Primero” — Spanish for “The First,” Roddenberry said.
The piece was co-created by Rational Vaccines’ chief executive and Emmy-winning director Agustin Fernandez.
Digital data into DNA
“When it comes to data preservation, storing information in DNA provides a whole new category of possibility,” Fernandez said.
“It provides long-term, environmentally safe storage with exponentially greater capacity than anything available on the market,” Fernandez added.
Dr. Paul Predki was in charge of converting the NFT’s digital data into a DNA sequence, which was subsequently stored in a naturally self-replicating bacterial cell.
Star Trek enthusiasts purchased 125,000 NFT trading cards depicting William Shatner as “Captain Kirk” on the WAX Blockchain in July 2020.
In an interview last year, Shatner said: “The revolution is coming, not just in the streets, but in the ether. It’s a knowledge revolution.”
Image courtesy of Cointelegraph News/YouTube