Unownable Token (U0T) is a new concept and allows you to possess something temporarily without owning it. Like a ball being passed around in a never-ending game, never staying with one person. U0Ts can create endless cycles of possession and inspire creativity.
Last (ownership)
The concept of an unownable token arose from the latest art exhibition called Last (ownership) by a Slovenian multidisciplinary artist The Miha Artnak. Through the exhibition, he explores seven concepts of ownership, one of them being unownability.
Unownability refers to the idea that certain items or concepts, universal or not, cannot or should not be owned by any individual. It challenges traditional property laws and suggests a paradigm of assets existing without being owned, as in tied to a single person until they decide to sell or transfer it. It pushes for a radical rethinking of property rights.
Under the current property law, where abandoned or unowned items are claimed on a "first come, first serve" basis, possessions can always be owned. If, temporarily, something has no (known) owner, it's considered trash, waiting for someone else to claim and use it.
The idea of ownership has been reduced to little more than an exclusive privilege to sell. Ownership as the exclusive right to dispose of property: this is certainly not what art inspires me to desire. — Martin Zeilinger
Artnak’s exhibition manifests the seven ownership concepts through material art pieces accompanied by their digital counterparts in the form of NFTs. The tangible painting representing the concept of unownability has been brought to the physical world as unownable - however, this posed legal issues since this concept does not exist in law books.
This led us to test whether the concept of asset unownability can be solved in the digital world.
The unownable object, a painting, is John Lin's interpretation of a photo taken by Klemen Ilovar, which captures an artwork created by Zora Berberich and The Miha Artnak
Unownable Token (U0T)
What law and physical possession limits the physical art piece the digital world solves and allows us to create a true unownable representation.
The code for the unownable token is based on NFTs, specifically the ERC721 standard, which allowed us to inscribe digital representations in a standardized way. However, we modified the code and added a takePossession() function to it. This allows anyone to take such a U0T into possession from anyone who currently possesses it, upholding the never-ending game of passing the NFT around without being owned. No wallet or smart contract, be it cold storage or multi-sig, can keep it locked, thus materializing the concept of digital asset unownability for the first time in history.
The takePossession() function also eliminates an NFT’s practical purpose of listing or selling it on a marketplace, as its ownership model defies conventional ownership and trading mechanisms. Or rather, the U0T nature should be included as a warning that buying such NFT on a marketplace (if ever listed) comes without ownership since anyone can take it from someone else’s possession.
Anyone can take possession of a U0T in seconds and join the never-ending cycle of transferring such NFT. To learn more and start (temporarily) possessing an U0T, please refer to unownabletoken.com.
Technical details
The unownable token is deployed on the polygon network. The smart contract and transaction (possession) history can be inspected here.
If you are interested in the technical aspects of unownable tokens, everything is open-source and free to use or improve.
Webpage and smart contract are available on GitHub:
- https://github.com/MoMannn/unownable-nft-website
- https://github.com/MoMannn/unownable-nft
- https://polygonscan.com/token/0x911B67ef816E6434781f101e6a52aC52fe9aC192
The webpage is hosted in a decentralized manner via IPFS powered by Apillon.
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