Worthy news for crypto enthusiasts, NFTs, the ’90s, Big Kahuna burgers, and Tarantino fans: The American-Tel Aviv director, Quentin Tarantino has officially announced an NFT auction, which includes excerpts from the original script of “Pulp Fiction” and several other additions.
As part of the auction, which will begin on January 17, 2022, episodes from the original screenplay of the 1994 film “Pulp Fiction”, handwritten by the award-winning director and never seen before, will be offered for sale. These files also include a unique audio interpretation of one of the iconic scenes and will be sold on the blockchain network Secret Network, Web3’s data privacy platform which was developed by the Israeli start-up SCRT Labs.
According to the company, the NFTs are offered on the Secret Network, a blockchain network with default encryption technology for smart contracts, which, according to SCRT Labs, means that the use of this encryption technology will ensure that Secret NFTs buyers are the only ones authorized to them, and they will be the only ones who can decide if they want to share them with others.
The Tarantino auction will take place on Ethereum, which is operated by the Secret Network, and participants will be able to use stable currencies that are compatible with ETH and ERC-20.
Whose copyright is it?
The Israeli start-up stated that “Tarantino owns and has the exclusive rights to publish the script of the film and owns the original copy that is written in his handwriting; it is a personal creative treasure that he has kept private for decades”… but some will disagree. When Tarantino’s plans to sell first became known, he was sued by entertainment giant Miramax, which produced the original film, claiming that its commercialization rights did not include NFT, which, as is well known, did not exist in the early 1990s. Miramax itself also has a plan to offer NFT of the film so it has issued a letter of cease and desist, however, Tarantino’s was not too impressed by this move.
They met through a mutual friend
In a conversation with Geektime, Guy Zyskind, one of the founders of Secret Network and CEO of SCRT Labs, said that the connection with Tarantino was initially formed through a mutual friend who linked them: “He was very attracted to our technology and what we do, and we quickly realized we wanted to collaborate.”
What is special about your blockchain network?
“Blockchain, in general, is a kind of distributed cloud on which applications can be built. Blockchains excel in that their information is very reliable, meaning that no one can change the code they run on or falsify the information in it. On the other hand, they have one significant drawback and that is that all their information is public to everyone. This means that it is not possible to build applications that use sensitive information over the blockchain – which is also true for leading blockchains such as Ethereum. “Our technology solves this obstacle – we have developed a blockchain called the Secret Network where all information remains private.”
In practice, Zyskind explains, software products can be built on this blockchain that are ‘permissionless’ and at the same time protect the information privacy of their users. The network itself was first launched in September 2020 and is supported by dozens of independent development companies (including SCRT Labs which developed the core of the network), world-class “secret nodes” operators, and thousands of “Secret Agents” around the world.
The Israeli start-up will deduct a commission from each NFT that is sold, but the company refused to comment on the amount they expect to earn from the sale but noted that there is “close cooperation between the two parties.” SCRT Labs, the start-up behind the Secret Network, is based on research conducted by its founder, Guy Zyskind at MIT, and is made up of MIT graduates and senior IDF cyber units. In 2020, the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that Zyskind’s previous start-up, Enigma MPC, had made an unauthorized issuance of securities following the ICO (initial coin offering) it carried out in 2017, raising about $45 million. The company was forced to return its ENG tokens to its buyers and list the tokens as banking securities. They also had to pay the SEC a fine of half a million dollars.
