Associated Press to launch NFT photography marketplace on January 31: Digital Photography Review

The Associated Press (AP) will launch a non-fungible token (NFT) photography marketplace, built by a blockchain provider called Xooa, on January 31st. NFT collectors will be able to purchase pieces of the news agency’s contemporary and historical photojournalism. Works from current and former photojournalists will be included in the initial collection, released over a series of weeks starting on the 31st, along with some Pulitzer Prize-winning images.

‘For 175 years AP’s journalists have recorded the world’s biggest stories, including through gripping and poignant images that continue to resonate today,’ said Dwayne Desaulniers, AP director of blockchain and data licensing. ‘With Xooa’s technology, we are proud to offer these tokenized pieces to a fast-growing global audience of photography NFT collectors.’

While pricing hasn’t been revealed, AP says that collectors ‘of all levels’ will be able to buy, sell, and trade images in their collections. Metadata for each image containing information about the time, date, location, equipment used and technical settings is included with each NFT.

Xooa’s platform also supports secondary market transactions – which financially benefit both the collector and artist. Secondary transactions can be completed with credit card transactions as well as major crypto wallets including MetaMask. Support for other popular cryptocurrency solutions including Coinbase and Binance are expected in the future.

An NFT is a unique digital token linked to a blockchain. You can read more about how photographers have leveraged the technology to enhance their careers in our article ‘NFTs: what they are and how they’ll impact photography‘. AP plans to mint their collections on the Polygon blockchain – an layer-2 solution for Ethereum designed to improve transaction processing speeds while lowering their cost (gas fees).