NFTs protect Shanghai’s Covid-19 lockdown record from censorship in China

The peak of Shanghai’s lockdown NFT minting event is based on an overnight online struggle on April 22 between censors and users posting The Voice of April — a six-minute video montage of voices recorded during the outbreak.

As of Monday, 786 distinct things relating to the film were available on OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace, with hundreds of other NFTs related to the Shanghai shutdown.

On April 23, a Chinese Twitter user with the handle imFong wrote in a highly circulated post about the interplanetary file system, a sort of distributed network, “I have minted the ‘Voice of April’ video into an NFT and have frozen its metadata.” This video will live on the IPFS in perpetuity.”

Twitter, like most major foreign social media and news platforms, is restricted in China, though locals can use VPNs to access it.

A Shanghai-based programmer said he and others in the city saw their efforts to keep the video alive as part of a “people’s resistance.”

He created an NFT based on a screenshot of Shanghai’s Covid-19 lockdown map, which shows how much of the city has been walled off from the outside world.

“Being stuck at home due to the outbreak gives me a lot of time,” he explained on the condition of anonymity.

Other Shanghai content available for purchase as NFTs on OpenSea includes Weibo posts decrying the curbs, photographs from inside quarantine facilities, and pieces of art inspired by life under lockdown.

Simon Fong, a 49-year-old Malaysian freelance designer who has lived in Shanghai for nine years, began drawing humorous sketches of life under lockdown in the style of Mao-era propaganda posters.