The Ethereum Blockchain Is Hiding A BIG Secret

When you think of the Ethereum blockchain you probably think of two things, financial transactions and of course, decentralised applications. Unlike the Bitcoin blockchain that is really designed for the facilitation of money transfer, the Ethereum blockchain takes this technology to another level, allowing developers to build their own side chains and decentralised applications on top of the Ethereum blockchain. This allows developers to build their own cryptocurrencies, their own blockchain technologies and even more novel projects such as games like Cryptokitties.

Often, the possibilities are endless when it comes to what you can do within Ethereum, so, it probably doesn’t come as a surprise to some when you find out that the Ethereum blockchain has now been used to store some very interesting ASCII art.

If you’re not sure what ASCII is, here’s a definition from Webopedia:

“Pronounced ask-ee, ASCII is an acronym for the American Standard Code for Information Interchange. It is a code for representing 128 English characters as numbers, with each letter assigned a number from 0 to 127. For example, the ASCII code for uppercase M is 77. Most computers use ASCII codes to represent text, which makes it possible to transfer data from one computer to another.”

Basically, ASCII is a code that represents visual characters which can be placed in order to display visual forms of art. It’s a digital art and one that is quite popular within tech circles. The art on the Ethereum blockchain varies, though new reports are currently focusing on one such piece, which depicts a very detailed penis (we won’t give you the definition of what a penis is, Google it if you’re unsure…).

According to The Next Web:

“Permanent Phallus is one of three ASCII artwork embedded in Ethereum. Permanent Meme is a loving homage to the Circle Game, a suitably suggestive companion to the aforementioned raging boner. A third piece, Permanent Tag, is more of an appropriate exercise in personal branding for the artists through graffiti.”

This is a great example of how versatile the blockchain is. Whilst this artwork might seem meaningless, it’s giving people the opportunity to be expressive within a new and upcoming technology. It’s clear that this has been created for comedic effect, but it works doesn’t it?

If you want to see it for yourself, here’s a link to an Ethereum data viewer that goes directly to the location of Permanent Phallus: https://tx-data-viewer.surge.sh/?tx=0x9ba033e5585acf078706b4d8bec230b3709f04c0eb329a51b5fd28b58bbe02e5