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This Is How India's First Blockchain Couple Got Married: Here's How They Did It
A couple from Pune became the first in India to celebrate a blockchain wedding over the weekend. The ceremony was place on the Open Sea platform.
During the current epidemic, this came to light just as we Indians were becoming used to attending virtual wedding nuptials. But what made this blockchain marriage so unique, and what does it mean?
What is blockchain, exactly?
A blockchain, for the uninitiated, is a permanent, publicly distributed ledger that validates transactions, events, and is immune to data alteration. Every new piece of data added generates a new block, which contains a cryptographic hash and a timestamp, forming a chain of validated data.
This marriage took place using an Ethereum smart contract, which is a digital agreement between two or more people that can be obtained simply by scanning the blockchain at any moment in the future, according to Blockgeeks.
Such contracts are often used in trade finance because they allow transactions to be settled without the need for third-party verification. Whatever you post on Blockchain is claimed to last indefinitely.
How did they pull it off?
They initially married by a judicial ceremony on November 15, 2021, as reported by the groom Anil Narasipuram, and they intended to keep it small without engaging a huge number of people.
However, they chose to commemorate their marriage with an online ceremony administered by their own "digital priest," Anoop Pakki. The Ethereum smart contract was enshrined in the form of an NFT (non-fungible token) produced on OpenSea, the world's largest NFT marketplace, which brings together people who trade in rare digital objects, crypto collectibles, and other items.
The NFT, nicknamed Ekatvam, was a replica of his wife's engagement ring, which included the wedding vows. Narasipuram and his wife, Shruti Nair, had set up Metamask Wallets, which are basically cryptocurrency wallets, in which the priest had coined the NFT on OpenSea and then transferred it to him.
The NFT was deposited to Shruti's crypto wallet when the transaction was completed.
Friends and family members who watched the ceremony on Google Meet were also able to participate digitally in the event, which lasted around 15 minutes.
Anil stated, "The transaction took a few minutes (and about $35 in ETH gas fees) after which we were pronounced husband and wife by our digital priest. The transaction is a permanent, immutable, and public record of our commitment to each other on the ETH blockchain."
