23 December 2022, Friday, 23:58 432

Blockchain technology makes millennium-old grottoes more accessible

Редактор: Тимофій Борзенко

The Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, northwest China's Gansu Province. Photo by Xinhua/Du Zheyu.

China launched a cultural heritage digital platform supported by blockchain technology to share digital renderings of six millennium-old grottoes sites in northwest China's Gansu Province with people around the world. This was reported by The Xinhua News Agency.

Jointly developed by the Dunhuang Academy and Chinese tech giant Tencent, the platform can authorize using over 6,500 pieces of high-definition materials in real-time, including digital scanning of murals and the Dunhuang manuscripts preserved in such grottoes as the world cultural heritage sites Mogao Grottoes and Bingling Temple Grottoes.

Previously, people had to wait even one week before getting the authorization to use those digital resources, according to the academy.

The platform also invites people to join in cultural and creative product designing with these cultural resources and share in the profits made by their creations.

This undated photo provided by the Dunhuang Academy shows the prototype of Jiayao, the official virtual cartoon figure of Mogao Grottoes, with a human upper body, wings, and a bird-like lower body, playing the Chinese musical instrument pipa, on the caisson ceiling of cave No. 360 of Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, northwest China's Gansu Province. Photo by Dunhuang Academy/ Xinhua.

"The Dunhuang Academy started the digitalization project in the 1990s to create digital versions of the Mogao Grottoes and other grotto temples and has accumulated massive digital cultural resources", – said Su Bomin, director of the academy, adding that "the first batch of these authoritative materials is open to the public to download for the first time".

"The transparent, immutable, and traceable blockchain technology, coupled with other technologies including facial recognition for identity authentication and artificial intelligence, can ensure the regulation of the digital market and intellectual property protection of digital products by providing a verifiable audit trail of transactions", – said Li Hang, vice president of Tencent's marketing and public relations.

"This is a pioneering undertaking for rendering digital resources services in the cultural relic field, which could promote sustainable development of resource utilization", – said Luo Jing, an official with the National Cultural Heritage Administration.