The Gutenberg Bible

Description

Why do we need NFT books?

Until now, the future value of our digital bookshelves was $0. We don’t own those books. We bought licenses to view those books.

NFT books are true digital assets that you own. They can be resold and transferred to whoever you want. Truly unique, they can grant community access to online groups and have scarce quantities. This is real-world utility, creating value and incentives beyond our centralized predecessors.

What do I get?

When you purchase this NFT – it isn’t just a picture of a book cover. It contains:

• The world’s first example of a Decentralized Encrypted Asset (DEA) – a fully decentralized NFT-based eBook
• Unique Cover Art (1 out of 10,000)
• Each ePub is unique and contains your cover image as well as the original cover art from Gutenberg
• Over 70 high-resolution images from an original Gutenberg bible that are all decentralized
• An embedded Video with Audio that is fully decentralized
• Over 650,000 words in Latin (the original Gutenberg text), all decentralized
• Access to a private Book Club for Gutenberg NFT Holders (early access to some future book releases)
• Includes standard NFT sized image of book cover, and a 4k hi-resolution printable image
• Readable on BookToken.io using our Open Anonymous eReader dApp
• Preview the collection at: JPG.Store, and  CNFT.io

How does the Lottery work?

• Equal chance at #0000 and #0001 which are included in the Lottery
• Each NFT Book cost 180 ₳DA
• Maximum Purchase is 100 NFT Books
• Policy ID: 477cec772adb1466b301fb8161f505aa66ed1ee8d69d3e7984256a43

Why the Gutenberg Bible?

This isn’t a political or religious statement – this is a historical shout-out to the first book ever printed using mass-production methods… and it’s in Latin. During 1455 and 1456 Johannes Gutenberg, working in Mainz Germany with investor Johann Fust and former scribe turned printer Peter Schöffer, completed the first book printed in Europe from movable type. Gutenberg didn’t actually translate the Bible, he used St Jerome’s Latin Translation. It is believed that Gutenberg might have started experimental printing of the Bible as early as 1452. He invented a special kind of printing ink, a method of casting type, and a special kind of press derived from the wine/oil press. This complex set of integrated technologies has been called the first invention in Europe attributed to a single individual. Printing books was also the first process of mass production—the process that centuries later became the model for the Industrial Revolution. Most Gutenberg Bibles contained 1,286 pages bound in two volumes. Creating only 180 total copies – of which there are only 49 remaining (but less than half of them are complete).

We chose to honor this amazing technological achievement by minting the World’s First NFT Book using the same exact St. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate Translation that Gutenberg used – in Latin. Included are over 70 images from the original printed edition which is truly a work of art. Obviously, if we can decentralize an asset as large as this  – we can do any book or media.

About the Artwork: All 10,000 NFTs feature unique cover artwork that is generated based on one of the original 180 copies of the Gutenberg Bible from 1455. We wanted to pay homage to that original design with this first release but add the complexity of computer-generated and numbered variations to put our artistic spin on the future of book minting.

Why does it cost 180 ₳DA?

(This section applies to the initial sale only, which took place on July 20th, 2022. Initial price was 180 ADA)
The last time a Gutenberg Bible was sold at auction, it went for $2.2 million USD. But that was in 1978. Experts now estimate the price to be around $35 million – but only if you could find one of the complete remaining copies out of the 180 that were originally printed for sale from a library or museum. We chose the price of 180 ₳DA in recognition of the original 180 Bibles that Gutenberg printed. While this is a revolutionary technology that will change how NFTs are viewed, we also wanted to offer this collectible edition of the first Decentralized Encrypted Asset at an affordable price for everyone in Cardano community.

How do book NFTs work?

While there have been some attempts at putting books on a blockchain – they are ultimately just uploading publicly viewable files, either PDFs, ePubs, or metadata that anyone can see. This is not a secure way to protect the Author and Publisher’s Intellectual Property. If this model was followed for all books, then all publishers would not need to exist, and no author would ever be paid for any book because everyone could read their work as soon as it was published on a blockchain.

We believe that authors should be paid for their work, and earn money on books that are being consumed and traded. Our book NFTs are unlike any previous attempt at storing books on-chain. In reality, they are radically different than any digital asset and NFT that has ever been created.

What is a 3rd Generation NFT?

To answer this we must quickly address the other previous NFT paradigms: first was the ability to upload images decentrally and have linked metadata point to on-chain assets. This evolved into what we refer to as 2nd Gen NFTs which were focused on collectible digital assets, mostly images but recently some video and audio-based items. They were all publicly viewable and effectively you were buying a receipt for the item. This however was not yet adding any true utility.

In considering the total size of the crypto market, we will use Bitcoin as an example: there are roughly 200MM Bitcoin wallet addresses, of which it’s estimated about 106MM people own bitcoin. In comparison, in the next 12 months over 1.1B people will buy and read an eBook. That is an existing market with roughly 10 times the total number of users – who are actually buying a digital product. We set out to move digital books to a Web3 environment and put books on the blockchain because it is by far and away a better infrastructure for digital assets. This will be a radical shift for the book and publishing market. A key factor in considering what makes digital books a 3rd Gen NFT, is that for any digital book to function and integrate into the publishing industry there must be DRM (digital rights management) schema and encryption to protect the IP to create value when purchasing the digital book. We leverage Web3 architecture and blockchain to do this. This entire book is completely encrypted and stored decentrally.

Also, in contrast to other NFTs, with a book, there has to be a fulfillment platform. Once you own the NFT book you must be able to read it somehow and access all of its contents. You couldn’t really do this in a metadata structure only because it would exceed certain block limits (and be slow). However, we can store encrypted media on-chain, and then have the contents decrypt and reassemble within our reader. Soon, we will open up our reader as an SDK (software development kit) to enable other NFT exchanges and platforms to open, decrypt, and let any user read any book NFT that they own.