No, not the copyright to the picture.They own the picture itself.You can, of course, download a version, but that's just a copy.Someone owns the original.It is art, and it has an owner.What does that mean in the digital age?That's what the guys at Larva Labs want to find out.The image above is just one of 10,000 pieces of art released last week as part of an experiment called CryptoPunks.What makes this project unique is that each image is tied to a piece of computer code on the blockchain-based Ethereum platform.That means the owner of each piece of art is clear—and that ownership can be transferred.The result is a finite set of artistic expressions that can be bought and sold like any other kind of art.Unlike most art, however, there's nothing to hang on a wall or show off in a building lobby.Will people have any interest in paying for the equivalent of a digital certificate of authenticity?"The whole thing is pretty weird, and that's kind of why we did this," said Matt Hall, who, along with John Watkinson, made CryptoPunks out of their mobile-focused company Larva Labs.

"There's like a weird intersection here between these virtual, digital things and an artificial rarity, but a rarity that is real and valuable in some sense."To test this out, Hall and Watkinson released all their art for free.All you have to do is have an Ethereum wallet (and about $0.11 worth of the cryptocurrency ether to cover transaction fees) and you can just claim whichever ones are still available (as of Thursday, there's plenty).Their experiment comes at an interesting time for blockchain, which is a technology that uses computers to create a decentralized and public ledger that can then be used to create extremely secure and permanent transactions and contracts.Blockchain is typically associated with the Bitcoin cryptocurrency, but Ethereum is where the action is.The Ethereum platform lets people build just about anything they want on the blockchain, opening up a whole world of possibilities for programs that can be run securely and publicly—such as CryptoPunks.Startups are even raising money through Ethereum—with one company recently raising $150 million from anonymous investors.

One of the main features of Ethereum is smart contracts that ensure all parties play by the rules.That means you can do things like exchange online goods without worrying (as much) about getting ripped off./8nzNcvZCfI — Duggan Roberts (@dugganroberts) June 13, 2017 There are already some early signs that the allure of collectibles can work in a digital environment.The first blockchain-based collector effort formed around the alt-right Pepe meme and remains relatively popular.Topps doesn't use blockchain, but does offer the digital equivalent of the physical trading cards on which it built its brand.Its Star Wars: Card Trader game has created a reasonably strong following complete with a secondary market with thousands of listings on eBay.One listing is asking $882 for what its owner claims is a one-of-a-kind card.There's also sports versions of the digital collecting app.There's plenty other examples of digital goods that have been bought and sold with real money, particularly in games with a social element.

Various tech companies have also experimented with charging for digital stickers, which are used in some apps as a way to tip other people.bitcoin algerieCryptoPunks aren't quite like any of those things.bitcoin sec rulingThey don't do anything.ethereum contract exampleThey can't be redeemed for anything.snowden bitcoin nsaThey're not really based off any pre-existing franchise.litecoin rate calculatorYou can show off your CyrptoPunks via account pages, but that's about it.bet365 bitcoinHall said that the project was conceived to test out some of the dynamics of scarcity and demand.bitcoin 2pm

There are various types of CryptoPunks, which were generated algorithmically from a set of templates.ethereum to usd converterEach one is different, but some types are more rare than others.ethereum non profitThe rarest types—aliens and apes—were cleaned out first.Like any art, there's a collectible nature to CryptoPunks.And like any online collectible, there's an inevitable comparison to Pokémon, as pointed out by Product Hunt founder Ryan Hoover.Certainly that was part of the inspiration, but Hall said they wanted to created something that was truly scarce and not subject to the whims of even its creators.Once the CryptoPunks project went live, he couldn't add to the existing set even if he wanted to.The nature of the blockchain system means that once the project went live, it became unalterable by anyone."There's Pokémon and these kinds of things, but it's a weird world where everything is replicable," Hall said.

The end result is a project that uses creative expressions and technology to test our notions of art and value in the digital world.It's the kind of thing that Andy Warhol might have loved—a mass-produced pop-art effort that, at its core, is about the interplay between creativity and markets.Are CryptoPunks worth anything?The first CryptoPunks were sold in recent days: a zombie for $1 and a particularly weird punk for $34, according to Hall.It's not a vibrant market just yet, but the possibility is there.It's not inconceivable to envision a future in which CrytoPunks or some other blockchain-tied series of art does become valuable.As more of life moves online, status symbols are bound to follow.Someday, owning a CryptoPunk might signify just how early of an adopter you were into the world of Ethereum and its thriving digital art scene.Or, they could just be a bunch of images.WATCH: Neil deGrasse Tyson on why Titan is his favorite moonEthereum – a Decentralised Consensus Network To most developers, learning to use a new platform, language, or framework will be a familiar task repeated dozens of times during their career.

Altogether more novel is learning to develop for a completely different paradigm.The decentralised consensus network, the blockchain, and its most well known implementation ‘bitcoin’ are not well understood even amongst the tech community and the subtleties of how this technology is fundamentally different from what we have used before is certainly lost on most of the general public.With that in mind before we proceed with building our first decentralised apps I will outline a few of the key technologies that are required to make a decentralised consensus network, and the game theory which makes use of these technologies to create a network.Public-private key cryptography is a class of encryption methods that require the creation of two separate keys; the “private key” known only to the owner, and the “public key” which is known to anyone.It has several useful attributes, the first is the ability of anyone to encrypt data with a public key that can only be decrypted by the private key.

The second is the ability of the private key holder to sign a piece of information using their private key in such a way that it can be verified by anyone holding the public key, without giving any information away about the private key.This second attribute is used for the accounts system in a DCN, and forms the basis of sending transactions.A hash function is a function that takes one piece of information of any size and maps it to another piece of data of a fixed size i.e.a 1MB file or a 500KB file when run through a hash function would produce two separate ‘hashes’ 128 bits in length.A Cryptographic Hash Function is one that performs this function but also fulfils three important requirements: it does so in a way that no information is given on what input data produced the hash (non reversible), it does so in a way that a minor change in the input change gives a very different output hash, that the hash cannot be calculated except using the hash function (no shortcuts), that there is an extremely low probability that two different inputs will produce the same hash.

Unlike the Client Server model peer-to-peer networks consist of networks of computers connected to one another directly without sending requests to any server.All computers taking part in the network are considered to be ‘peers’ and have equal standing within the network as one another.Peer to Peer networks generally rely on the peers being altruistic and sharing at least as many resources as they take from the network A blockchain in all it’s incarnations is a database type designed specifically for use in a DCN.It can hold any information, and can set rules on how information is updated.Its primary feature is that it is updated in discrete chunks called ‘blocks’ which are ‘chained’ together using hashes of the previous blocks content.A blockchain contains not only the information that is currently stored in the database, but also every change made to the database in its history.Known as the state and transactions respectively it makes for a database with a complete custodial history that cannot be altered without altering every subsequent block.

A private key always signs ‘Transactions’ or requests to change the state of the database, and the signature is stored in the blockchain.Originally envisioned as a spam prevention system proof of work is a simple method for proving that you have *probably* performed a large number of mathematical operations.It is implemented in the majority of cases using a cryptographic hash function; given an arbitrary piece of data, (like a list of transactions and the header of a block) you must find a second piece of data which, when combined with the first, produces a hash that has certain characteristics (like a number of trailing zeros).Because it is impossible to predict what second piece of data will produce the required hash, you must randomly iterate through possible data until you find one that produces the hash you require.The Ethereum Virtual Machine is the primary innovation of the Ethereum project.This is a virtual machine designed to be run by all participants in a peer to peer network, it can read and write to a blockchain both executable code and data, Verify digital signatures, and is able to run code in a quasi-Turing complete manner.

It will only execute code when it receives a message verified by a digital signature, and the information stored on the blockchain tells it is appropriate to do so.The Decentralized Consensus Network and the Generalised Blockchain Ethereum is a peer to peer network where every peer stores the same copy of a blockchain database and runs an Ethereum virtual machine to maintain and alter it’s state.Proof of work is integrated into the blockchain technology by making the creation of a new block require all members of the network undertake the proof of work.Consensus is achieved via incentivization for peers to always accept the longest chain of blocks in the blockchain by distribution of a cryptographic token of value: ‘ether’.This leaves us with a new piece of technology that does not fit within the client-server model nor does it qualify as a traditional peer-to-peer network as its existence is incentivised meaning it can be relied upon to provide a consistent deterministic service.