Faroe Islands postal service issues NFT-embedded stamps

The Faroe Islands have issued a new series of digital “crypto stamps,” with a digital copy stored on the blockchain as a nonfungible token (NFT) while still serving as actual postage. 

On June 23, the Posta Faroe Islands’ official website for issuing postage announced that the autonomous region issued its first collection of crypto stamps called Stamps of Maybe in collaboration with VariusSystems. 

According to the postal service, each physical stamp has a digital version stored on the blockchain, which allows users to have a say in the creation of the stamp, adding to the rarity. 

Michael Dorner, the CEO of VariusSystems, said after attending a summit with the Universal Postal Union at the United Nations, that he could see countries worldwide are interested in new use cases of emerging 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 stamps in the Faroe Islands’ collection are linked to the local Faroese weather station, Veðurstova Føroya, and use real-time weather data at the time of activation to influence how the digital version of the stamps appears. 

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This is not the first time blockchain technology has been employed by a postal service to create stamps as NFTs and reinvent the idea of stamp collecting, also known as philately.

The Netherlands’ PostNL and Austria’s PostAG have also issued NFT crypto stamps. PostAG’s first editions launched in 2019 on the Ethereum blockchain, with another iteration in 2021 adding near-field communication chip functionality for additional verification.

At the time, Dorner told Cointelegraph that the combination of NFT technology and the legacy of stamp collection creates a “collector 3.0.”

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