Employees of the American cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Rebecca Rose and Peter Kacherginsky used the Ethereum blockchain to enter into a legal marriage. The day before, Rose tweeted a message that the couple tied the knot on March 14, both physically and virtually.
In addition to the traditional Jewish wedding ceremony, her spouse wrote an Ethereum-based smart contract called Tabaat – which translates as «ring» – that issued unique tokenized NFT «rings» in the form of TBT tokens to the couple’s wallets. It has become an analogue of traditional rings. Let’s talk about the situation in more detail.
To begin with, let us recall that the advantages of the blockchain are really suitable for fixing some important events. Since large cryptocurrency networks like Ethereum are immutable, new data in them remains forever. This means that in the future, no one will be able to fix this and delete some important transaction or correct the balance of a wallet.
Moreover, blockchains have been used for this before. For example, in July last year, a user of the social platform Reddit immortalized the birth of his son on the Bitcoin blockchain. He greeted the newborn with the phrase «Welcome to this world, baby.»
Now history has repeated itself. True, the Ethereum blockchain, smart contracts and NFT were used here.
How blockchain is used
TBT tokens are unique and exist in only two copies, which are now kept by a married couple. NFTs are linked to animated ring images created by artist Carl Johan Hasselroth. The logic here is simple: Real wedding rings are irreplaceable and valuable in the first place because of their sentimental value, so NFT tokens serve the same purpose.
On March 10, Kacherginsky created a smart contract for 2218 lines of code. Launching a smart contract on the Ethereum network cost him 0.25 ETH, which was the equivalent of about $ 450 that day. An hour after the creation of the contract, three more transactions were made from Tabaat for an additional fee of 0.0048 ETH or $ 87. In total, the tokenization of the marriage ceremony cost the couple $ 537.
This amount was used to pay for gas, which is needed to interact with the Ethereum network. At the same time, working with smart contracts is much more expensive than sending coins. And transferring ERC20 tokens costs more than sending ethers.
For example, today for a fast transfer of ETH you need to pay the equivalent of $ 5.4, while sending a stablecoin USDC on the Ethereum blockchain costs $ 16. Finally, a swap on the Uniswap decentralized exchange will cost $ 51.
The ceremony itself consisted of two translations, which were the transfer of the «rings» from the contract to the bride and groom. In total, the entire transaction process took 4 minutes of confirmation by the Ethereum network, while the miners received $ 50 in commission.
At the same time, the average cost of a typical wedding in the United States reaches $ 25,000, reports Cointelegraph. That is, the contrast in costs is obvious.
Peter and Rebecca chose to exchange tokens as tokens of their love, because they both believe in the ability of the blockchain to remain unchanged and invulnerable to all sorts of attacks. Here’s what Rose tweeted about the matter.
For us, images of digital rings hidden inside these NFTs will show up in our cryptocurrency wallets as a constant reminder of the connection they symbolize.
Indeed, the couple’s NFTs will remain on the blockchain forever as long as there is at least one active Ethereum miner in the world who will support the network. Thousands of network nodes have copies of the full Ethereum blockchain, that is, formally, Rose and Kacherginsky announced their marriage to the whole world with 100% confirmation of this fact.
We believe that the idea of a married couple turned out to be unique. In fact, they not only left the data about their marriage in the immutable blockchain forever, but in addition used for this the main current trend of the cryptocurrency industry in the form of NFT tokens. And although the legal force of such interaction in the Ethereum network is now unlikely to be recognized by the states, in the future the situation may change significantly.
We do not exclude that such a move will become a trend, and further more and more newlyweds will formalize their consent to live in marriage within the block chain. Perhaps, in the future, someone will create a special smart contract, thanks to which the process will be greatly simplified.
