Make of this what you will?
LexisNexis has unveiled the launch of the first Practical Guidance NFT and an accompanying charity auction.
The Practical Guidance non-fungible token (NFT) was created by the LexisNexis Practical Guidance Australia team and is a guidance note on understanding and interacting with cryptocurrency, as well as how to own and trade NFTs.
To celebrate the launch of the token, the legal tech company is auctioning off the Guidance Note NFT, with 100 per cent of the profits going to Médecins Sans Frontières Australia (MSF Australia), also known as Doctors Without Borders.
The creation of the NFT came after generative artificial intelligence (AI) took the world by storm, according to LexisNexis. A key part of the digitisation revolution is the ability to assign ownership to digital assets, and through that ownership allow for innovative new ways for humans to transact. NFTs registered on a blockchain now represent new forms of ownership.
As traditional companies often find it complex to understand how to interact with crypto services in a legally compliant and practical way – including how to potentially own and trade NFTs – lawyers are often asked to help navigate the legal, regulatory and practical complexity.
To meet this increasing need for lawyers to be technologically literate, LexisNexis created a guidance note on NFTs, which has been turned into an NFT.
This allowed the team to walk through the complexity of transacting as a large multinational on the blockchain with all the concomitant learnings, LexisNexis Asia and Pacific managing director Greg Dickason said.
“It’s essential for legal organisations to either hold or understand how to hold a crypto wallet and be savvy enough to trade in crypto should they be asked to advise on what to do. NFTs are a great way to learn about the technology and the processes it takes to set up, advise, trade and protect your digital IP,” he said.
“The NFT we are auctioning off is rare, and the rarity of an NFT impacts its value. This is the first NFT of a Practical Guidance Note, and it’s the only one we intend on minting. So that’s extremely rare.”
Part of LexisNexis’ Practical Guidance ethos is to learn by doing, the provider added in a statement.
“We thought it would be very appropriate if we, as a large publicly listed global organisation, went through the motions of minting an asset and then offering it up for a charity auction. The process has by no means been fast or simple. It has taken months to get approvals from legal, compliance, treasury and security. Ironically, the tech side of things was the easiest part,” the organisation said.
“We have mapped our journey in a series of blogs that aim to educate and inform the sort of issues and challenges we faced. We believe that what we have traversed is very similar to what other organisations will face.”
