Despite what many may believe, NFT art did not start with the Bored Ape Yacht Club. It didn’t start with CryptoPunks either. So what was the first NFT and who created it? Ultimately, this singular honor goes to Quantuma generative work of art that was created by digital artists Jennifer and Kevin McCoy. After its creation, Kevin turned Quantum into an NFT in 2014.
And the reason why he coined this particular piece of art? It’s pretty simple. He did it for the property.
The birth of NFTs
After he and his wife created Quantum, McCoy wanted to develop a way to sell the piece in its digital form. The problem? I had no way of establishing the provenance of a digital artwork.
For the uninitiated, “provenance” is the documentation that authenticates the creator, ownership history, and appraised value of a particular piece of art. Unfortunately, provenance documents for digital art did not exist at the time. In other words, there was no way to verify the creator and ownership history of digital works. After mulling his options, McCoy joined forces with the tech entrepreneur. Anil Dash To solve the problem. Eventually, the duo began exploring blockchain technology to see if it could provide a viable way forward.
In the early 2010s, blockchain technology was still a niche market. Bitcoin was only valued at $630 (its price at the time of writing is just over $16,500), Ethereum had just launchedand coin makers regularly overpromised, underdelivered, and was sued into oblivion. But McCoy and Dash weren’t deterred, and the decision paid off, to put it lightly.
As is well known, blockchain technology contains several properties that favor the buying and selling of digital art. With it, people have a reliable way to identify the creator and track the ownership history of any item on a blockchain. This served the purposes of McCoy and Dash perfectly, and McCoy registered Quantum on the blockchain. “I had the idea to use blockchain technology to create indelible provenance and ownership of digital images of this kind. Quantum was the first to be recorded in this way,” McCoy said later.
Shortly after that first minting, McCoy and Dash demonstrated how “monetized graphics” like this could be used to establish provenance and sell digital art. His demonstration took place during a live performance for Seven on Seven conferences. During the presentation, McCoy sold a digital image to Dash for $4 using the blockchain. And with that, McCoy and Dash unknowingly laid the foundation for what would grow. in a multi-billion dollar market less than a decade later.
Quantum rediscovery and controversy
Unfortunately, Quantum was forgotten after it was minted in 2014. This was largely due to its original home in Namecoin, a branch of Bitcoin that predates Ethereum. Specifically, Quantum lived in Block Namecoin 174923and that’s where it stayed for years, until the NFT bull market of 2021.
When NFTs started gaining mainstream attention and selling for millions of dollars in 2021, McCoy realized he might be sitting on a golden egg. So he started promoting Quantum, using media outlets like Axios to discuss his work and his role in NFT history. Thanks in large part to this publicity push, Quantum eventually went up for auction at Sotheby’s. And in June 2021 it sold for over a million dollars at auction. The winning bidder was artificialan anonymous NFT collector.
But soon legal problems arose.
Shortly after its million dollar sale, experts noted that a specific quirk about Namecoin was called into question. WHO exactly owned by Quantum at the time of sale. How do you explain it? Ledger Insights, 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 for a completely separate entity: Veteran Collector earlyNFT — to seize the ownership rights to Quantum before the Sotheby’s auction.
In an ironic twist, EarlyNFT secured these rights just one day after the Quantum article was published on Axios. Ultimately, EarlyNFT challenged the validity of the Sotheby’s auction through a lawsuit.
Who won? Fortunately, the artists who created and coined the work. In March 2023, a federal judge in New York dismissed the lawsuit. While the Namecoin blockchain was controlled by Free Holdings, the judge noted that Kevin McCoy went on to mint it on Ethereum, essentially creating two different NFTs in the process.
While the controversy surrounding Quantum’s legacy is far from the perfect way to honor the storied NFT and its creators, both Jennifer and Kevin McCoy continue to innovate in the space. In April 2023, the couple will launch their first NFT collection with a Web3 platform. Read our interview with the McCoys to learn about the project and hear their thoughts on how Web3 has changed since they helped start the digital revolution.
