The Future of Stuff Podcast Ep.3: Securing Provenance and Trade of Cultural Artifacts, with Dr. James Hester

Can blockchain help us maintain and secure the storied value of what we bring into the world? Let’s ask Dr. James Hester, Head of Ontology at Mattereum.

EPISODE NOTES

For this episode, I invited Mattereum’s Head of Ontology, Dr. James Hester, former museum curator and medieval arms and armor expert, to discuss a unique area of the Mattereum project with the curatorial side of things. We discuss the use of Mattereum Asset Passports to secure provenance and trade of cultural artifacts, starting with the launch of passports and NFTs for three distinct historical and cultural artifacts.

Assets Live on OpenSea: https://opensea.io/collection/mattereum-fine-art-and-antiquities-collection-warr

Track: “Optimist” by Zoe Keating

1. James Hester’s Journey From the Humanities to Crypto [00:01:02]
2. The Storied Value of Things [00:03:57]
3. The Dark Seedy Underbelly of the Art & Antiquities World [00:06:43]
4. Asset Passports in the World of Antiquities [00:11:13]
5. Asset Passports Bring Composability to Trade [00:20:47]
6. Tokenizing Cultural Artifacts [00:22:01]
7. From Static Inventories to Liquid Markets [00:28:36]
8. Launch of Three Cultural/Historical Artifact NFTs [00:30:30]
9. Artifact NFTs in the Marketplace [00:34:51]
10. The Importance of Innovating Within the Material World [00:36:55]

JAMES HESTER’S JOURNEY FROM THE HUMANITIES TO CRYPTO [00:01:02]

Garrison: I’ve been really looking forward to talking to you about the curatorial side of the Mattereum project and the Asset Passports. Would you mind introducing yourself to the listeners and giving a little detail on your background?

James: Sure. Sure. I’m James Hester I’m Head of Ontology for Mattereum which is a very fancy inflated way of saying I’m in charge of the department that gathers together all of the information about the objects that we onboard and figures out how that information is best presented in the Asset Passport.

And I came about this position and came to Mattereum through a very kind of roundabout way. I’ve known Vinay for quite some time, for over a decade. And prior to coming here my career was primarily in the museums and heritage world. I’m a historian by training and most of my previous roles have been either in education in museums or in the curatorial collections management side of things.

My primary role prior to coming on board with Mattereum is I worked in the curatorial department for the Royal Armories museum here in the UK. And the role that I finished up with them is pretty much a dream job if you’re a medieval nerd like myself, which was, I was their curator of collections looking after their collection at the Tower of London. Just a bit of extra background, my particular area of specialty that I trained up in is arms and armor. A lot of my previous work is with antique weapons and armor and that sort of thing. So working at a gig like the tower is pretty much the holy grail of museum gigs for someone such as myself.

But I then wrapped up a PhD again working with medieval swords, documenting and trying to figure out what we can learn by examining the objects more closely and see what that can tell us about how they were actually used.

And so on the other end of that, Vinay invited me to come on board with Mattereum because they were looking for somebody who was basically an objects guy. In a company that’s entirely populated by tech types and lawyers and crypto folk, having somebody that had a very firm grounding in how to work with objects, what’s important about them, how to gather and organize the information about them. Vinay saw my skill set as being ideally suited for that. So he brought me on board. So it’s the absolute, last thing I would have expected to do at the other end of a PhD, dealing with medieval swords, but it’s been quite a ride these last three years and it’s been quite cool.

Garrison: Yeah, that’s amazing. Having someone who’s like a genuine expert on the kind of museum curatorial side of things that has an eye for historical detail ,and detail about these objects, and important information to secure about them moving forward.

THE STORIED VALUE OF THINGS [00:03:57]

James: Yeah. Because essentially the way I always say it is that a historian at the most basic level is basically a storyteller. It just so happens with the stories they tell happened to be true for the most part. It’s often said that history is an art rather than a science cause it’s not just the kind of gathering and reporting of facts, but it’s the interpretation of them, understanding connections and causality and all that stuff as well.

And you could really apply the same thing when it comes to working with objects. I’m not a, I’m not a typical kind of hitting the archives, looking at financial records from the 14th century kind of historian. I’ve worked with things. Things are what interests me. And really, what makes things interesting to me and presumably I hope to others is the stories that are behind them.

It’s what makes something more interesting than say, another exact copy of the same thing that didn’t have the same story. Paper napkins could be exactly the same, come out at the same factory, but one of them suddenly becomes much more significant because once upon a time, Picasso drew a little doodle on one of them and didn’t on the other.

And so as a result that napkin has an aspect of its story that makes it just a little bit more interesting to many people. And personally, I think all objects when it comes to trying to understand them and in the case of what we do here, trying to document them, it’s a matter of teasing out that story.

What is it about these objects that makes them interesting. Obviously from a commercial standpoint, what is it about these interesting facts that could perhaps make them more valuable than other examples of the same thing? And so it’s this process of chipping away and teasing out that story and then learning how to build it in a way that you can present it properly to other people.

Garrison: Yeah. And it’s the challenge of maintaining that story or protecting that story around these objects over time. That’s at the heart of a lot of friction in the arts and antiquities trade. You hear stories all the time. There’s a story that you sent me of a small museum in France where over half of its collection were forgeries and they spent like almost $200,000 to acquire those paintings. And you hear stories like that all the time.

It’s a challenge to keep a track of the story around any object, whether it’s a cultural artifact or not.

James: Yeah, absolutely. As you say, you have situations where unless people are really carefully maintaining a record about an object, then, it may be very well-documented as to its past, but then yeah just no one keeps up that process. And so over time it’s it’s later history falls through the cracks and then falls to other people later down the line to have to backtrack and try to rediscover this because people didn’t keep the fire burning, so to speak.

THE DARK SEEDY UNDERBELLY OF THE ART & ANTIQUITIES WORLD [00:06:43]

And then also you’re absolutely right. That in a world where it is the stories that make an item valuable there’s of course the temptation to make up stories about things in order to artificially create value for things that aren’t actually valuable in the same way as ones where those stories are true.

And this is the great seedy underbelly of the kind of art and antiquities worlds that’s just gone on forever. Like so many things it’s an arms race, it’s a constant back and forth of the industry finding ways in order to better authenticate and deter fraud and prevent fraud to happen. And as soon as these new measures are released and put into play, people are already well underway of trying to figure out ways to undermine them and get around them and that just goes back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And up until now a good deal what cuts through that essentially amounts to what an old mentor of mine just used to refer to as connoisseurship, the ability in this world, which has historically been very traditional and I wouldn’t go so far as to say neophobic because they do make use of new technologies when they come up. They take their time in kind of fully appreciating them because they’re very old establishment. They’re used to doing things in a certain way. “Thank you very much. And it’s been just fine for centuries.”

They’re used to doing things the kind ofslow, tried and true way. And so in that world, a good deal of the what cuts through the dross and tries to arrive at the truth is essentially informed scholarly opinion about these things. These are your great experts and your great dealers and your specialists in these areas that your art historians who make very considered informed pronouncements about objects. And these are pretty much held to be gospel until new information comes to light that might either update or upend it. It’s very similar process to I suppose the sciences or academia where it kind of trickles ahead as new information comes to light and as kind of specialists stand on the shoulders of giants and build up more of an understanding about things. Which it works quite well, but we are human and humans are fallible.

So at times even the most skilled expert can make a bad call or not have all the information to hand. It’s a good system, but it’s not a perfect one. And unfortunately we’re getting into a world where we’re dealing in these objects in a much more fast paced environment. The online sale world compared to your trusted local dealer or the auction house having the ability to have a solid understanding about what could potentially be dodgy and what seems right. Having the ability to make that call right then and there, as opposed to having to take the time to seek out an expert and rely upon their assessments and everything becomes trickier. And even for things such as the illicit trade and in art and artifacts, there are very well established mechanisms in place, but they’re not perfect.

So for example, the two kind of paragons of the criminal activity revolving around the art and antiques trade is the art loss register on one hand and the Interpol art theft database on the other. And so these are the two go-to places where most museums and galleries and auction houses, if anything comes through there as part of their due diligence checks to make sure that everything’s above board with the objects, they’ll typically run it through one or both of these databases to see whether or not a flag comes back saying this is recorded as stolen, or this has been recorded as having some suspicious provenance where could have been, say, spoils of war or illegally trafficked or this has been flagged as a known forgery and that sort of thing.

So that’s usually the first port of call and they’re very comprehensive. They’re very well-trusted. They’re industry standards. But they’re not perfect because all they’re able to do is give people a certificate saying that at the time that they were asked to check, there were no red flags about the subject in their database.

Something could flag up the day after and it would be, it wouldn’t necessarily have an impact on that because it will have fell out of that immediate purview. So there’s little things like this that make it not a perfect system. And it’s all the more prone to failure in a very fast paced environment.

ASSET PASSPORTS IN THE WORLD OF ANTIQUITIES [00:11:13]

Garrison: So that brings us to new solutions that are designed with existing institutions in mind in terms of how they think and the details that would be necessary for them to actually use such a system. With Mattereum, we have the Asset Passports, the bedrock that everything else has kind of built on top of. And there are many use cases that arise from that. Could you describe what an asset passport is?

James: I guess the easiest way to describe an asset passport is essentially container for batches of information about an object, all of which are backed by warranties provided by the people who give that information. So it draws information from as many different sources as can be found and as are able to offer up information. So it allows you to get a completely comprehensive view of what an object is. Not just in terms of its description, but every relevant bit of information related to the object. So things like compliance standards, authenticity paperwork, research records, you name it. If there’s something that’s connected to an object, it can be represented in the Asset Passport and we can draw that information from as many different sources as there are.

So what that allows us to do is build not only a very comprehensive picture about the object, but also a very — I’m gonna use the magic blockchain word, decentralized — picture about this object, because we’re able to draw it from multiple parties. Not all of which will necessarily be the seller who has a financial interest in bigging up the object.

So it allows us to kind of source information from loads and loads of neutral parties which greatly reduces the possibility of bias or outright fraud sneaking into the object’s record. The people that provide this information we refer to as Certifiers. So every Certifier who weighs in on some aspect of the object presents their information in the form of a warranty on the accuracy of that information. And they set all their different terms of their warranty, and they can customize that however they want. So they set what the maximum liability they’re willing to assume connected to the warranty. So in the event that there’s a dispute about it, this is how much they’re willing to pay up to in damages if the information causes consequential loss. They’re of course able to ask a fee in exchange for providing this warranty. So they set that, and then all the other terms, like how long the warranty is good for before it needs renewing, et cetera, et cetera. So we gather together all of these warranty backed bits of information, and we stick them all in the passport each in their own section.

And somebody who has some kind of interaction with the object, whether it’s a buyer, but not just a buyer, this could easily be say a courier for the object who needs to be certain about certain aspects of it as part of their paperwork or insurance and stuff. Or if someone wants to securitize it or tokenize it or do any other number of things where part of doing whatever it is they’re doing they need to be certain about certain bits of the object. They then can subscribe to any or all of these warranties on the information before they either buy or otherwise interact with the object. And so when they do, they’re protected by these for any of their for their activities. And then down the line, if something comes to light where some of the information turns out to be inaccurate, then there’s a dispute resolution system that kicks in where we have arbitration panel at the highest end that will examine all of the evidence and come to a decision as to whether or not either party was in the wrong, or the claim had merit or not, and then decides whether or not there’s any kind of recompense that’s to be dealt out as a result.

And so our hope is that mechanism does two things. One, by virtue of it being as rigorous as it is — because we try to be very rigorous in terms of the standards by which the information is gathered — we hope that acts to deter attempts to bring fraudulent information into the system, just because people know from the outset that they’re taking responsibility, and indeed financial responsibility for this stuff for anything they put down in there. So we hope that’s enough to deter people from trying to play a funny business with it.

Garrison: Skin in the game.

James: Exactly, Exactly. But at the same time, unfortunately, we can put up a universe of deterrants and people are still gonna try to jump the fence and try to pull a fast one now and again. So when that happens and it is discovered, the other mechanism kicks in, which is our rock solid lines of accountability, as far as who is responsible for what in terms of the information.

So if somebody does remain undeterred by our standards and still tries to sneak faulty or fraudulent information into the system. When that is found out they’re on a hook they can’t wriggle off of and they’re going to be responsible for that quite possibly financially. Our hope is that that combination has sufficient teeth that it will deter and reduce kind of fraud in the system for objects that go through our ecosystem.

I can relate a couple — we were very pleased about a month ago that our system seems to be functioning properly. I won’t go into specific details of course, but we had two customers who initially came to us with some very interesting objects of quite high value. One a museum grade piece of natural history and the other was an old master painting that was valued at at least eight figures.

Garrison: Wow.

James: yeah, so it was both of which were like nontrivial objects and we gave them the general rundown of: okay here’s the information we need, here’s how we need it to be packaged for us. Go away and gather this and this under these standards, here are going to be the terms. And so they went away to start gathering the information. And within a few days, both of them wrote to us very cordially of course saying that unfortunately they were going to have to back out because in the process of doing the work we asked them to , information came to light that cast some doubt on to the authenticity of the objects. They were, out of a sense of discretion, decided okay, we’re not going to take a chance on these so sadly, we’re going to have to bow out.

Obviously that’s unfortunate because, they’re two customers that we would like to have worked with, but at the same time I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was quite exciting because it means our mechanisms are actually working. It’s making people, making people really do the work where I think in some other cases, people motivated by the potential kind of commercial value of it might just be tempted to cut some quarters or phone in and be like, “Oh yeah, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

It made them stop and think twice about: is this really worth it? And they decided it wasn’t. So to me, in a way that kind of proves that at least to a limited extent, the standards that we’re trying to establish are doing their jobs.

Garrison: Yeah, that’s great. I like how within the Asset Passport creation process and how it functions — because it’s basically like a living document. It’s not a static thing. around it can change the information within it can change, but there’s a cryptographically secure evidence chain of any alterations or new developments around it.

James: Exactly. So you can never change the records in there. You can just add on to them and amend them. And because it goes up on the blockchain, you have a nice clean kind of digital paper trail as to what information was added when, and by whom and all of that. So you can see when information was added, which from a kind of collections management standpoint is really quite cool.

And this is a point that I talk about with my museum colleagues a lot is the use of the blockchain in this function is that kind of like records management could potentially be hugely useful for people in the museums or the kind of the antiques trade for doing their due diligence checks, which is usually an extraordinarily tedious and lengthy task because the typical rules, for museums and dealers and auction houses at any, anytime an object comes into their possession, even if for museums, it’s a loan. So it’s not even a new acquisition. The receiving body is required to do a due diligence check, which is basically to track the thing’s provenance from now as far back as humanly possible, ideally to the things creation. Which obviously for super old objects is just a nonstarter, but it’s to go back as far as we have reasonable records to go.

And that process, even if it’s well understood, even if these are very high-profile objects, that process has to be repeated in some way shape or form every single time this object changes hands. Just a bureaucratic nightmare. It’s the bane of curators. Just to do this task.

So the possibility of having an objects provenance record to date securely stored somewhere like a blockchain means that for due diligence checks, you could simply produce the evidence of the existence of that record on the blockchain up to a certain date, along with the warranties or the vouchers that it’s accurate and well-documented information. So at that point, the remainder of the due diligence check is just filling in any potential gap from then to now, which makes the job significantly easier. So usually when I tell my colleagues about this, their eyes start to grow very large and excited cause it would really be quite a huge improvement to what is otherwise at the moment a very tiring task.

ASSET PASSPORTS BRING COMPOSABILITY TO TRADE [00:20:47]

Beyond just the kind of the selling of objects, the passporting technology and the use of the blockchain for object records management has so many wide wider implications that would be really useful just in the field in general.

Garrison: And something that I find really interesting is how the asset passport it’s not a singular thing. There’s many different facets to it. But the way you’re able to kind of program value flows around an object as well as social interaction. So like the social protocols around certification and trade and vaulting all this stuff, has a nexus from which it operates. To kind of dig into things you can build on top of it.

We covered one: there’s the more decentralized version of expert certification you mentioned earlier. One phrase that’s come up to describe that is a Trust Communities, which to people who are familiar with blockchain and some blockchain concepts. You can think of it as like a mini DAO but it’s a mini DAO around certifying the authenticity of an object over So it’d be really interesting to see how that kind of evolves. And the use cases that surround that.

TOKENIZING CULTURAL ARTIFACTS [00:22:01]

And then there’s another thing that’s really important to mention is the tokenization. You also mentioned that briefly. Could you describe how an object, once an Asset Passport has been generated, how does it become tokenized? How does it become an NFT that you can see on a marketplace?

James: Sure, Sure. A bit of history first: the original incarnation, if you will, of Mattereum, the Asset Passport was essentially the standalone creation. We were aware of the existence of obviously of tokenization and another things that were kicking around in the ecosystem at the time but our plan at that point was to allow the Asset Passport to become this base foundation layer that really just nails down what an underlying object is. And then people could then take that and do all sorts of other clever stuff on top of that. And they could do the tokenization, securitization and everything, having a lot more solid confidence and understanding as to what the underlying object beneath all of that actually was.

So originally our plan was to leave all that other clever stuff to other people and we would just provide that nice solid foundation underlayer. And it’s only been more recently that we’ve taken another look at the notion of the NFT and thought about the possibilities that it could have being made a slightly more integral part of the process. So that’s in the kind of, I guess you’d call it the MK II version of the Asset Passport, where it is now a more integrated part of the process rather than this extra things that aside. Because we’re dealing with actual, real physical objects, as opposed to a kind of digital objects, which most of the NFTs that people are hearing about that are all the rage at the moment, it’s mainly kind of digital property that’s being represented by these things. For us, the underlying properties, actual, tangible, physical objects, we took a slightly different approach to conceiving what the NFT is and how it functions. The easiest way I tend to explain it is, for us an NFT functions as kind of something like a cross between a warehouse receipt and a vault key, if you will.

As you said, first, we create the Asset Passport for the object, it’s complete, comprehensive definition of what the thing is in all respects. So once we have that foundational layer, then we create, we mint the NFT which is paired to that object. And the fact that act has been done becomes yet another warranty in the passport. So there’s a whole separate warranty about the NFT creation saying a unique non fungible token has been created that is paired to this object, and only this object, and we have all the details about the NFT and the mechanisms that we’ve designed in order to verify that this entity corresponds to exactly this object and vice versa. So that’s all into that warranty. And then, one of our requirements is that in order for that NFT to be live, that is, to be able to be sold and transferred, what have you. The object itself has to actually be out of circulation. It has to be securely vaulted in a neutral suitably secure facility.

So for a lot of the objects that we’re dealing with this tends to be things like specialized art storage warehouses of which there are many around the world that fulfill this service. These same places will house other types of objects: wine, luxury goods, pretty much anything within reason of certain exceptions, of course. And there’s loads of different places that provide that service for different classes of objects. Once we have evidence from the object’s owner that the object has been securely vaulted essentially out of their immediate custody, then we activate the NFT. And the reason we do that is it in a way it’s just as much for their kind of protection and reduction of risk as it is for the potential buyers, because what it takes off the table is any possibilities of either side either accusing or being accused of trying to pull a bait and switch saying, this isn’t the object that it’s supposed to be, that was delivered to me. Or reduces any accusations of NFT owners saying, “I went to try to claim the actual object and the owner refused to give it to me.” And all these potential headaches that could come from redeeming a digital item in order to take possession of a physical item.

While the NFT is out in the world, being sold or transferred, the object itself is safely stored somewhere that greatly reduces if not eliminates the possibility of the owner trying to pull a fast one at the last minute. So once somebody purchases that NFT, what that entitles them to most of the time — because the advantages, because the NFT business is such a new thing we have the ability to basically customize what the terms of the NFT are to whatever people want which is quite nice. But generally speaking, our default is that a possession of the NFT entitles that person to take physical custody of the object if they so choose.

So the NFT owner has two things that they can do with the NFT. They can continue to sell on the NFT which is obviously more liquid than trying to sell the physical object. So it can pass around as many hands on various auction sites. Basically it can travel at the speed of the internet through as many hands as you can imagine. Until at one point, somebody who has the thing decides that they actually want the physical object. At which point they redeem the NFT, at which point it is frozen and rendered unable to be transferred around.

And then that person can either walk up to wherever it’s being stored and pick it up in person or arrange to have it delivered or what have you. So they take control of the object. You can think of it as a one in one out scenario where, if you imagine this dichotomy between the object and its corresponding NFT, whenever one of them is out in the world, the other one is safely stored away or rendered dormant. So then later down the line, if our person who has picked up their object decides that they want to sell the NFT again, they simply repeat the exact same process. They vault the object, notify us that it has been done so, at which point we then can reactivate the NFT and the whole process can repeat itself again.

And that can go back and forth for the entire life of the object.

FROM STATIC INVENTORIES TO LIQUID MARKETS [00:28:36]

Garrison: Yeah, that’s great. And it also seems like there’s a, a pretty good value proposition here for museums and galleries um, to Turn like they’re illiquid inventory and stock, and actually be able to create a market for it.

James: Yeah, I’ve been hearing kind of early noises about this from some of the big museums. Especially with the pandemic, a lot of museums are quite in dire straits in terms of funding and stuff. So they’re all looking for ways to try to replenish their coffers. And I have heard that there are some that are trying to dip their toes into the NFT pool to see what kind of possibilities could exist. And so there are some who are essentially selling either individual one-off or kind of small batch, limited edition runs of NFTs that are somehow tied to say a very prominent work of art. And obviously it doesn’t grant the NFT owner the ability to take ownership of the work of art, but it grants them kind of certain rights to say reproduce images of it or display.

In other ways it almost acts as basically a kind of sexy digital, new version of the kind of patronage system where they become a better factor towards the well-being of that work of art. And perhaps they’re recognized somewhere as a result of that. And as a result of all that being tied to an NFT, that person has the ability to sell on that benefit package much more easily than if say they were a trustee or, a normal kind of donor to a museum. So Yeah. There’s a lot of exploration being done apart from just NFT equals you being able to take possession of the object as far as some of the other kind of rights and benefits that can be conferred that places like museums are looking into. So yeah, there’s a universe of possibilities that this could be of immense benefit to the industry.

LAUNCH OF THREE CULTURAL/HISTORICAL ARTIFACT NFTS [00:30:30]

Garrison: Coming up here as soon, Mattereum is launching an NFT collection. Three very distinctive and diverse artifacts. Could you go into detail about that?

James: Yes. Yes. Everyone has those moments when you know even if you enjoy your job, everyone has those tasks that are given you as part of work where you get to really just truly play. And this was that for me is essentially Vinay gave me a very generous budget and told me to go shopping. He says, “James, you know the art and antiques market, you have a, decent tastes and decent kind of breadth of knowledge of different things. Here’s a generous chunk of money. Go and acquire three cool objects for the company for us to passport and use as Guinea pigs for you know, applying the Asset Passport to this sector.

I get to go on a shopping spree and it was marvelous. And I was quite happy with the objects that I came across. So as you say, there were three objects.

One of them is a limited edition. I believe this one is number three of a run of 20 etching signed and numbered by none other than Salvador Dali, very famous modern artist.

Another was a bronze statuette of the Tibetan Buddhist wrathful deity Acala. That one was dating from we reckon the turn of the 19th century, early 20th century. So it was a really spectacular piece of this wrathful Buddhist deity. I’m sure there’ll be pictures available so you can take a closer look at it yourself, or indeed you can see the Asset Passports when they launch.

And then the third one, which I think has everybody quite excited, was a stone hand axe. Like a prehistoric flint chipped axe that’s meant to be grasped in the hand and is used as a basic tool that was found in an excavation I believe sometime in the early 20th century if memory serves in France, in Southern France that is dated to roughly we reckon somewhere between 350 and 500,000 years old. And it’s a truly spectacular piece. It’s an amazing condition. The workmanship is truly impressive. And these things came to my house before they were brought off, sent off to art storage. So I get the chance to do like a proper inspection and to hold them myself. And that was the one that really kind of made my hair stand up on end, like actually holding this tool. That’s, you know, some of our earliest hominid ancestors and someone had made this thing almost half a million years ago in France. It’s quite a spectacular piece.

Garrison: It’s also crazy to think about. A weird way to frame it, but like the atoms that make up that hand axe are older than probably any other material that surrounds you, whether it’s apartment or the neighborhood, it’s just this object from a very long, distant past that’s, impossible for us to even, you know, conceptualize like kind of timeline.

James: And when you stop and think about it, when you have something that’s like capital O old like that, and you hold that in your hands and you think, Okay, on the one hand, half a million years is a long time, but when you also stop and think about it, the fact that we’ve gone from a half a million years to building rather impressive but far from primitive stone tools, to space travel, being fairly routine, computers in our pockets that are millions of times more powerful than than anything even our parents generations could have imagined growing up. Going from there to where we are now in the space of half a million years from the wider picture of things, that’s the blink of an eye.

That’s a rather impressive to think. And I’m very fond of saying to Vinay that I find this whole process quite cool that we’re taking what is arguably one of mankind’s oldest and earliest kind of tools and we’re onboarding it and presenting it to the world through the medium of one of mankind’s most current kind of cutting edge tools and technologies.

So in a way it’s like book-ending human ingenuity really.

ARTIFACT NFTS IN THE MARKETPLACE [00:34:51]

Garrison: How will people interact with these NFTs and these Asset Passports, like in practice once these are launched and active. How do people actually interface with them?

James: Most people will be familiar with where you go to find listings for NFT sales and auctions. Most notably places like OpenSea, for example. So the NFTs themselves will be listed in the normal marketplaces for these things. And once you go to the listing for these objects, in the description you will find explanation to the fact that this object has also been issued with a Mattereum Asset Passport, and it provides a link where you can go and visit the passport.

And that’s actually an important part of ensuring the security of making sure that the passport is forever tied to that specific NFT and vice versa. So we use what we call a bi-directional link mechanism. As I said, if you go to the NFT listing for the object, you will find the link to that object’s Asset Passport. So you click on it from there and it’ll take you to the Asset Passport and in the Asset Passport, in addition to as I mentioned before the warranty asserting that the NFT has been created and here’s the terms of the NFT and all of that, there is also a link in the passport, which takes you to where the NFT is listed. So a way of verifying that you’re not dealing with either a fraudulent NFT or a fraudulent Asset Passport is to go through that whole loop. So say from the NFT listing, you click on the link to the passport, you go to the passport and then from the passport, you click on the link to go to the NFT listing. It should take you back right where you started. And we do that so it prevents the ability to try to slot a shoddy NFT or passport in between that process, because it’s baked in from the start. Both are created at the same time at the point of launch. So that’s the way we verify that this NFT is inextricably tied to this Asset Passport and its object.

THE IMPORTANCE OF INNOVATING WITHIN THE MATERIAL WORLD [00:36:55]

Garrison: Yeah so we’re coming up on the hour here. I think we covered quite a bit. I think this is a very exciting use case for NFTs and a lot of people focus on like the digital art side things, and there’s some, you know, multimedia with music and stuff that are quite interesting, but having something that deals with the material world which is something this show is very, particularly focused on. New ways to kind of program value flows and structure social interaction — these protocols around goods and services, to secure trade and make it more efficient, more accessible, more ethical production and consumption and stuff like that.

All of this stuff arises from this kind of, infrastructure that’s being laid out. So it’s really exciting.

James: Yeah, I agree because, I maybe I’m biased having spent my life working with tangible things, but I have the sense that we have this new this new technology, which has immense potential, but I think the danger is if we fall into the trap of allowing this technology to allow us to become even more, I suppose ethereal in our lives than we already are.

There’s so much of our lives that already that’s intangible and not basically just exists as bits in a computer. And of course that has its uses, but it’s also, to me, it’s a point of weakness at times, because it means that, when you come right down to it, it’s air.

So to me, I think it’s while it’s important that we use the technologies in those areas in order to improve it, I think it’s also important that we use this in order to perhaps better ground ourselves in our physical world. Because, until we start uploading our brains to computers, we exist in Terra firma and we better get used to it.

And so I think using it in order to better our relationship with the physical world and the physical things around us is I think an equally important use for this than just making things more digital and more ephemeral. I think that’s a side of things that until recently has become, has been underappreciated. One of the reasons that I’ve felt so drawn to Mattereum is Mattereum seems to recognize that’s just as important. So it’s a banner that I’m prepared to carry.

Garrison: Yeah, I agree. Designer David Rudnick calls this Digital Prime versus Physical Prime thinking, and in crypto is largely Digital Prime mentality. It’s all about digital value around these different assets, but, you know, projects such as, you know, Mattereum and others that are emerging are trying to leverage this technology to improve, you know, physical conditions and secure physical trade of goods, which is the vast majority of all the value on the planet.

James: It’s the single most human activity and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

Garrison: yeah, it’s a really exciting to see what people build moving forward.

James: Thanks. Yes, definitely.

Garrison: All right. It was a pleasure to have you on the show.

James: Oh, it was a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me Garrison.

Garrison: Yeah. And I’ll definitely poke you to come back on down the line your, yeah. Your perspective is very unique um in terms of your uh, in terms of your background.

James: The token humanities refugee in a sea of tech and crypto people. Yes.

Garrison: Yeah. Fantastic.