The Faroe Islands, which are a self-governing territory, are the latest national mail service to release a set of NFT collector stamps.
The Faroe Islands have made a new set of digital stamps called “crypto stamps.” A digital copy of each stamp is saved on the blockchain as a nonfungible token (NFT), but it can still be used as real postage.
On June 23, the official website for issuing postage, Posta Faroe Islands, reported that the self-governing region had released its first set of crypto stamps, called Stamps of Maybe, in partnership with VariusSystems.
The post office says that each physical stamp has a digital version saved on the blockchain. This lets users have a say in how the stamp is made, which makes it even more rare.
Michael Dorner, CEO of VariusSystems, said that after visiting a summit at the United Nations with the Universal Postal Union, he could see that countries all over the world are interested in new ways to use new technologies.
“We felt an enormous interest not only in the NFT stamps but in blockchain technology […] and how this digital revolution with decentralized blockchains can help their businesses grow and stay ahead of the curve.”
The Faroe Islands’ stamp collection is connected to the local weather station, Veurstova Froya, and uses real-time weather data at the time of activation to change how the digital stamps look.
This is not the first time a postal service has used blockchain technology to make stamps as NFTs and change the idea of stamp collection, which is also called “philately.”
PostNL in the Netherlands and PostAG in Austria have also made and sold NFT coin stamps. PostAG’s first versions came out in 2019 and were built on the Ethereum blockchain. In 2021, a new version will add a near-field communication chip for extra proof.
