Associated Press Auctions NFT in Spirit of 2020 US Election

The Associated Press (AP) is auctioning off a non-fungible token (NFT) artwork commemorating the first U.S. election recorded on a blockchain.

According to data from NFT marketplace OpenSea, the artwork titled "The Associated Press calls the 2020 Presidential Election on Blockchain – A View from Outer Space" will be sold in the next eight days. As of press time, the top bid was for $928 in wrapped ether.

The artwork depicts a visual of the electoral college map from space using election data AP published on-chain at the time. The piece of digital art is considered one-of-a-kind and a 1/1 edition.

AP used an Ethereum address to declare the winner of the U.S. 2020 Presidential Election via Everipedia’s OraQle software. This marked the first time a U.S. election was called on a blockchain, according to the news agency.

AP’s address acted as a cryptographic signature providing authenticity via metadata that AP included of the "exact date and time that AP called the election," according to a press release shared with CoinDesk on Thursday.

AP Director of Data Licensing Dwayne Desaulniers confirmed to CoinDesk that the auction is ongoing.

“As we continue to test blockchain for revenue models and journalistic use cases, we thought an original and creative NFT would be interesting to test on many levels," he said via email.

Desaulniers added that the map in the image is based on the election data the AP published on-chain in November. "We thought we would use the NFT to mark that milestone," he said.