The South China Morning Post is joining Dapper Labs, the creator of the popular non-fungible token (NFT) series NBA Top Shot, to release a number of NFT trading cards commemorating the history of Hong Kong, with the first drop expected to cover 1997 during the end of British colonial rule in the city.

Founded in Hong Kong in 1903, the Post has been the paper of record for the city with a 118-year-old media archive. The news organisation released its full whitepaper on its NFT project ARTIFACT on Tuesday with details of the NFTs based on Dapper Labs’ Flow blockchain.

More specifically, the company is looking to release in the coming months a series of NFT trading cards based on many iconic moments in Hong Kong’s history. The inaugural drop of the 1997 Series will cover many historical moments in 1997, including the July 1 ceremony commemorating Hong Kong’s handover to the Chinese government, the passing of Deng Xiaoping on February 19 that year and the death of Princess Diana in August.

“We are delighted to join the Flow ecosystem and partner with a major global blockchain innovator in Dapper Labs. This partnership is essential for creating world-class NFT experiences of our historical archives,” said the company’s CEO Gary Liu, “Through our ARTIFACT whitepaper, we look forward to inspiring other ‘guardians of history’ to share our vision of making history more discoverable, connected, and collectable.”

Different ARTIFACT trading cards will be assigned to various rarity levels.
Tuesday’s whitepaper also announced the establishment of a Council of Experts to guide the forming of the ARTIFACT standard, including Alibaba Group Holding’s co-founder Joe Tsai, President of Christie’s Asia Pacific Francis Belin, Dapper Labs’ co-founder Mikhael Naayem and Animoca Brands’ chairman Yat Siu. Alibaba is the sole owner of the SCMP, and Tsai is the chairman of the publisher.
The Post first announced its ARTIFACT project in July, joining other media organizations around the world that see NFT as part of the future for the digital publishing industry. In June, CNN launched “Vault by CNN” to tokenise its history of news coverage. In August, Fortune raised 429 ether, valued at about US$1.3 million at the time, in its first-ever NFT sale.

The Post’s inaugural 1997 Series collectible cards will be divided into four rarity levels which correspond to the varying degrees of significance of the events these cards are based on.
The card based on the Post’s front-page coverage of the 1997 handover ceremony will be classified as “Super Rare,” while another commemorating the outbreak of the bird flu will be of the “Rare” grade. Other events such as the arrest of Hong Kong’s jockeys and horse racing trainers will be of the “Common” grade.

(source of news: https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/3157065/scmp-and-nba-top-shot-series-creator-launch-their-1997-series-nft-trading?module=perpetual_scroll&pgtype=article&campaign=3157065)