A few weeks ago I got a message on my twitter account from the Cryptic Seals project, asking if I wanted to look into their start-up NFT project. They had released 64 'Cryptic Seals', based on the idea of the Japanese Hanko, which I learned are actual seals/stamps used in Japan. Hanko/Seals are a custom that probably originated in China and are used for all kinds of signatures, both personal and in businesses or other kinds of organisations.
Now I'm an absolute sucker for anything that's pretty and geometric, so I immediately liked both the NFT Seals as well as the knowledge of these 'physical' seals - although hanko or inkan are nowadays used electronically as well, many important documents will still use the physical stamp - and who can blame them :-) they're pretty!
Physical seals
I mostly know the use of seals from (Western) movies: you pour a little red wax on a document, put a stamp on it that shows your personal signature, and let the wax dry.
Once the letter arrives at its destination just from the seal alone you will be able to recognize:
- That the letter is important (not just a quick note that anybody can read!)
- From whom the letter came from
- That the letter is still unread and only you and the writer probably will know the contents of it
Can Seals be functional in web 3?
The wish of the Cryptic Seals team is that people (creators!) in the digital/NFT/crypto space start using personalized Seals to verify their identity and provide a sign of authenticity, and have started by releasing 64 Hanko's to see if the idea gets picked up.
The idea is, that further on their roadmap, there will be a way to verify the seal digitally with the blockchain - the seal might be scanned or 'seen' in some way, after which you can check the wallet & holder of the seal.
I personally like the Seals, and if the team indeed develops a seal recognition system I can see it being used in the crypto space. Maybe you could sign your 'work in progress' photos with it (as a kind of watermark), then have the WIP pics refer to your finished art that's already uploaded as an NFT? Or sign your blogs on Hive or any other platform with it? (See end of post.). Or use it on your e-mail signatures where people can then immediately see your art collection, either the one you created yourself or when you're buying art off of others.
It might become a recognizable way for Web2.0 to 'link to'/refer to 'Web3.0'.
Scarcity?
In NFTs there's always mention of scarcity, and after the release of the first 64 they want to add more, but this project will be capped:
Seals have 5 letter IDs: CSxxx, the "xxx" is a number encoded in the hexadecimal system therefore the hard-cap (if we ever reach it) would be FFF = 4096
The seals are currently released in groups of 8:
Seals are herd animals and travel in groups of 8. You may click the properties field (RED: On OpenSea) for each of them and you will see "NATURAL HABITAT". This is just a funny flavour but we decided that Seal that live in the same place share some visual characteristics
The seals are kept in a very 'clean' and geometric/minimalistic design, for now to make it possible to verify them easily. As said, I love geometry, so I picked one Seal that had strong contrasts and if you squint your eyelids looks like sun rays.
The first series - and my signature
The first series is for sale on Opensea! The current price is not more than a few dollars, extremely cheap as they're still building up an audience, but I'm sure prices will be changed after they release more than the first 64.
The project is still very small and could use some followers on Twitter too!.
Let me know if you like the Hanko's visually and if you would use them, and if yes, HOW?, in the comments!
