Signal Co-Founder Moxie Marlinspike Creates NFT That Renders as 'Poop' Emoji When You Buy It

Signal Co-Founder Moxie Marlinspike has created an NFT that shows up differently based on the marketplace you open it in.

Signal Co-Founder Moxie Marlinspike Creates NFT That Renders as 'Poop' Emoji When You Buy It

Photo Credit: OpenSea/ AtMyWhim

Moxie Marlinspike's NFT is titled At my whim, #1

Highlights
  • Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike trolls NFT buyers
  • Buying the NFT renders as a large 'poop' emoji in the wallet
  • Marlinspike's prank aims to highlight the fragility of NFTs
Advertisement

Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike, who has been at the receiving end of social media trolling on several occasions, appears to be at the other end of the spectrum this time. Marlinspike has created and listed a non-fungible token (NFT) for sale that changes its appearance depending on the platform or the user who accesses it. If someone actually buys the NFT, the 'token' apparently shows up inside their digital wallet as a 'poop' emoji, hinting at the potential fragility of NFTs, which are supposed to be a formal proof of ownership.

Noted in a report by The Verge, the ‘token', titled ‘At my whim, #1, shows up differently on popular NFT platform OpenSea then how it does in NFT marketplace Rarible. But that's not the peculiarity of its digital creation — it shows up as a 'poop' emoji inside your digital wallet.

Marlinspike explains in a Twitter thread that follows his NFT announcement that the entire point of his prank is to shed some light on the fragility of NFTs. He says NFT image data, in fact, is not saved on the blockchain — instead a URL of the image is saved on the blockchain that points to the image. Meaning it's just the record that lives at the chain and not the digital art or picture.

That generally gets hosted somewhere else, which implies that an NFT buyer dishing out loads of money for their piece of art might be at the mercy of hosts who're in no way, part of the blockchain and can “change the NFT image at any time”.

This isn't the first time Marlinspike has thought of an innovative way of communicating a problem to the masses. The company had earlier instigated a public relations feud of sorts with Facebook. Back in May, Signal put out a blog post that Facebook refused to let Signal buy ads on Instagram that sought to highlight how the tech giant gathers and makes money off its users' data.


Interested in cryptocurrency? We discuss all things crypto with WazirX CEO Nischal Shetty and WeekendInvesting founder Alok Jain on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details.
Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.

BSNL Offers Up to 4 Months of Free Broadband Service to Bharat Fibre, Landline Subscribers
TCL Thunderbird Smart Glasses Pioneer Edition With MicroLED Colour Display Announced
Share on Facebook Gadgets360 Twitter Share Tweet Snapchat Share Reddit Comment google-newsGoogle News
 
 

Advertisement

Follow Us

Advertisement

© Copyright Red Pixels Ventures Limited 2024. All rights reserved.
Trending Products »
Latest Tech News »