Winning a Nobel Prize is a dream for many. Of course, one has to do some exceptional work when it comes to winning the Nobel Prize. However, the University of California, Berkeley is now offering the opportunity to purchase Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) for those who can disclose the patent of the Nobel-prize winning inventions.
The NFTs are linked to the digitized documents correspondence and internal forms documenting initial research findings resulting in the biomedical breakthrough in the 21st century. One such is the CRISPR- Cas9 gene editing by the UC Berkeley’s Jennifer Doudna received Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and for the Cancer Immunotherapy, James Allison won Nobel Prize in 2018.
University looked forward to the NFT for Allison’s cancer immunotherapy invention in advance of the 24-hour auction, which is set to begin from June 2. The complete auction process will be held at the Foundation, an Ethereum- based NFT platform for auction. The entire earning from the ETH will be proceeded for the education and innovative research funding.
In the past few months, NFTs have become the only means to sell digital assets, including videos, artwork, and Twitter posts. For example, in March this year, an NFT of images collage created by an artist named Beeple was sold for the price of $69.4 million.
NFTs on giving
UC Berkeley will be receiving 85% of the auction price, while the rest of 15% will be going to the Foundation. However, Berkeley will keep receiving 10% on every proceeds, while the foundation will receive 5%.
According to Lindsay Howard, the head of community at the Foundation, it has helped set up the industry standards for some of the activities of NFTs, including Edward Snowden’s fundraising initiative Freedom of the Press Foundation, and now UC Berkeley’s NFT will push crucial academic research forward. UC Berkeley has meanwhile received a total of 44 CRISPR- based patents in the US, along with other patents.
UC Berkeley’s offering of NFTs will draw the university’s leadership in the Blockchain area, which ranges from researcher and faculty, listed among the number 1 in Blockchain. Furthermore, they are listed under the diversity focus startup she256, which was started on the UC Berkeley campus. Its members had contributed towards the creation of NFT offerings.
