Ether Rocks: Digital Rock Paintings Fetching Six-Digit Figures on Ethereum Blockchain

Cryptocurrency investors often make news for drawing huge profits or massive losses. Rarely do they create waves for investing in something as dead as a rock. Well, they do now. A digital painting of a Grey-coloured rock, part of a pet project from 2017, has sold for an outrageously high price. Its non-fungible token (NFT) version was sold for ETH 33 — equivalent to $100,000 (roughly Rs 75 lakhs). These rocks are one of the first-ever NFT collectible projects on the Ethereum blockchain. Only 100 such "pet rocks" were created.

Put simply, every Ether Rock is a digital painting of a large stone. Each such NFT has a unique colour and is identical in shape and size.

Peter McCormack, the host of the popular What Bitcoin Did podcast also shared the news on Twitter.

However, the Ether Rock website says, “These virtual rocks serve NO PURPOSE beyond being able to be bought and sold, and giving you a strong sense of pride in being an owner of 1 of the only 100 rocks in the game.”

The rocks were created via a smart contract and deployed on the Ether blockchain in December 2017, shortly after CryptoPunks' June 2017 launch. The first Ether Rock was likely minted the same month for ETH 0.0999 ($289 or roughly Rs 21,500), according to Etherscan. Surprisingly, only 20 more rocks were sold in the first three years of the project's existence. About 10 more were purchased this year. They were created based on a model that each rock minted pushed up the price of the next one. As of August 10 (12:23pm IST), Ether price in India stood at Rs. 2.35 lakhs.

The scarcity of the rocks, because of their self-proclaimed title of "collectibles," has pushed their prices very high. The price increase was also aided by the recently bubbling NFT market.

CryptoPunks have been one of the biggest success stories in the world of NFT, with Ether Rocks now following them.