Problem Statement

According to the United Nation’s Director-General, documenting the stories about people’s lives and cultures all over the world represent a priceless heritage that should remain accessible to the public and future generations, helping us grow and comprehend the world since they reflect the cultural, social and linguistic diversity of our communities [1].

In the “Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage” defined by UNESCO [2], the States Parties (countries that ratify the Convention) are obligated to take the necessary measures, to create one or more inventories of the intangible heritage present in their territory and shall update them regularly to ensure the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage and to include communities, groups and relevant NGOs in the process.

These inventorying efforts are coordinated primarily by States Parties with rigid hierarchical processes that centralize the decision making, despite the efforts to include relevant institutions, researchers and community representation, resulting in inefficiency and losses. These inventory archives are stored and maintained by State Parties in centralized physical and digital storages, managed by State representatives or third-party organizations, and thus vulnerable to human activities, natural disasters, and other factors.

Most recently (2020), Rio de Janeiro’s 200-year-old National Museum of Brazil, which contained a collection of more than 20 million items, including audiovisual cultural artifacts, such as films, photographs, and audio recordings, was completely consumed by fire and much of its archive destroyed [3]. This is only one out of many examples of the necessity for our society to define a more democratic, efficient, resilient and secure means to store and maintain our historical records for future generations.

Decentralized blockchain networks offer an alternative solution to increase security, resilience and decentralize intangible cultural heritage inventorying. Data is stored on a distributed ledger and less vulnerable to natural disaster or malicious attacks. In addition, decentralized applications can be developed to automate curation of historical records and efficiently make it available for consumption.