Associated Press to Launch New NFT Marketplace Using Polygon

American media giant Associated Press (AP) will be launching a new non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace that utilizes the Polygon (MATIC) blockchain.

The platform, built by NFT-focused platform-as-a-service company Xooa, will feature an initial collection of photography from current and former AP journalists and a variety of digitally enhanced versions of their work.

The media company is marketing its NFT platform as a way for photojournalist enthusiasts to get a piece of historic moments captured by AP. For example, one of the first photos that will be released as an NFT by AP is this Pulitzer-Prize winning photo of a Jewish settler pushing up against Israeli security officers in the West Bank, taken in 2006.

AP says that each NFT will come complete with a “rich set of original metadata offering collectors awareness of the time, date, location, equipment and technical settings used for the shot.” Profits will go towards funding more AP journalism.

Dwayne Desaulniers, AP’s director of blockchain and data licensing said,

“For 175 years AP’s photographers have recorded the world’s biggest stories through gripping and poignant images that continue to resonate today. With Xooa’s technology, we are proud to offer these tokenized pieces to a fast-growing global audience of photography NFT collectors.”

The marketplace will support transactions through card payments, as well as crypto wallets like MetaMask, with support for Fortmatic, Binance, and Coinbase to come later.

AP says the NFTs will be minted on Polygon, which they describe as “an environmentally friendly, Ethereum-compatible layer two solution.”

In October, AP announced it would be launching a node on Chainlink (LINK) to cryptographically verify its news data and make it available on leading blockchains.

“Chainlink technology is the ideal way to provide smart contract developers anywhere in the world with direct, on-demand access to AP’s trusted economic, sports, and race call data”, Desaulniers said.

“Working with Chainlink allows this information to be compatible with any blockchain. The open-source software is reliable, secure, and widely used across leading blockchain networks.”