<\/p>\n
Despite what many media outlets would lead you to believe, NFT art didn\u2019t start with the Bored Ape Yacht Club<\/a>. It also didn\u2019t start with CryptoPunks<\/a>. So what was the first NFT, and who created it? Ultimately, this singular honor goes to Quantum<\/a>, a generative piece of art that was created by digital artist Jennifer McCoy<\/a> and subsequently turned into an NFT by her husband, Kevin McCoy, in 2014. <\/p>\n And the reason he minted this particular piece of art? It\u2019s really rather simple. He did it for ownership.<\/p>\n After his wife created Quantum, McCoy wanted to develop a way to sell the piece in its digital form. The problem? He didn\u2019t have a way of establishing the provenance of a digital piece of art. <\/p>\n For the uninitiated, \u201cprovenance\u201d is the documentation that authenticates the creator, ownership history, and appraisal value of a particular piece of art. Unfortunately, provenance documents for digital art didn\u2019t exist. After mulling over his options, McCoy joined forces with tech entrepreneur Anil Dash<\/a> to solve the problem. Eventually, the duo started to explore blockchain technology to see if it might provide a viable path forward. <\/p>\n Back in the early 2010s, blockchain technology was still a very <\/em>niche field. Bitcoin was only valued at $630 at the time, Ethereum had only just launched<\/a>, and coin creators regularly overpromised, underdelivered, and got sued into oblivion<\/a>. But McCoy and Dash weren\u2019t dissuaded, and the decision paid off \u2014 to put it lightly. <\/p>\n As is widely now known, blockchain technology contains several properties that are conducive to buying and selling digital art. With blockchain technology, individuals have a trustless way of identifying the creator<\/a> and tracking the ownership history of any item on a blockchain. This served McCoy and Dash\u2019s purposes perfectly, and McCoy registered Quantum on blockchain. \u201cI had an idea to use blockchain technology to create indelible provenance and ownership of digital images of this kind. Quantum was the first ever to be recorded in this way,\u201d McCoy later said.<\/p>\n Shortly after that first minting, McCoy and Dash demonstrated how \u201cmonetized graphics\u201d could work during a live presentation<\/a> for the Seven on Seven conferences. During the presentation, McCoy sold a digital image to Dash for $4 using blockchain. And with that, McCoy and Dash unwittingly set the foundation for what would grow into a multi-billion-dollar market<\/a> less than a decade later.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, Quantum was forgotten following its 2014 mint. This was largely due to its original home on Namecoin, a pre-Ethereum Bitcoin offshoot. Specifically, Quantum lived on Namecoin Block 174923<\/a>, and that is where it stayed for years \u2014 until the 2021 NFT bull market. <\/p>\n When NFTs started to gain mainstream attention and sell for millions of dollars a piece in 2021, McCoy realized he might be sitting on a golden egg. As a result, he started to promote Quantum, turning to media outlets like Axios<\/a><\/em> to discuss his work and its role in NFT history. Thanks largely to this publicity push, Quantum eventually went up for auction at Sotheby\u2019s<\/a>.<\/p>\n In June of 2021, it sold for more than one million dollars at auction. The winning bidder was sillytuna<\/a>, an anonymous NFT collector. But there were problems. <\/p>\n Shortly after its million-dollar sale, experts noted that a specific quirk about Namecoin called into question who <\/em>exactly owned Quantum at the time of the sale.<\/p>\n As explained by Ledger Insights<\/a><\/em>, Namecoin requires users to renew whatever is minted on the Namecoin blockchain every 250 days to retain ownership of the digital item. Notably, McCoy never renewed Quantum. This allowed a completely separate entity \u2014 veteran collector EarlyNFT<\/a> \u2014 to scoop up the ownership rights to Quantum before the Sotheby\u2019s auction. In an ironic twist, EarlyNFT secured these rights just a day after the piece about Quantum was published on Axios.<\/em><\/p>\n Eventually, EarlyNFT contested the validity of the sale through a lawsuit.<\/p>\n Who won? As of writing, the Sotheby\u2019s sale still stands, and sillytuna still owns the piece. However, that could change, as the full legal proceedings are still pending.<\/p>\n Although it\u2019s unfortunate that this unearthed piece of NFT history drummed up a fair share of controversy to go along with it, the NFT community is better off knowing the existence and story of Quantum. First movers often set a precedent for those that follow \u2014 and given the extreme highs and lows we\u2019ve already seen in the NFT space, it seems Quantum did just that.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nThe birth of NFTs<\/h2>\n
Quantum rediscovery and controversy<\/h2>\n