All aboard when Indian Railways releases NFT train tickets
Indian Railways is offering non-forfeitable token (NFT) train tickets for two select trains from Delhi on the Hindu festival of Holi between March 20 and April 2.
The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has announced that passengers of two newly launched semi-high speed trains – Tejas Express 82501 and 82502 – will get train tickets in the form of NFTs.
In an official post, IRCTC said:
“These tickets are not just digital notes. They are a celebration of the rich cultural tapestry of Lucknow and Delhi (Indian cities).
With NFT train tickets can be verified on the blockchain by allowing the creation of personalized NFTs that can be verified by authorities and the public, aiming to enhance the “travel experience” of travelers in India.
The initiative pays homage to the festival of Holi, also known as the Festival of Colors, and is partnered with digitization platform NFTtrace.
The company uses smart contracts to maintain train ticket purchase records on the hyperledger blockchain and manage the tracking process.
More than 1.2 million tickets are booked on IRCTC every day and if the initiative is common to all trains in the region, the adoption of NFT could increase significantly. Digitization of tickets through NFTs will prevent the widespread problem of forgery and misplacement.
NFTtrace has not yet responded to Cointelegraph's request for comment.
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India has revealed that it primarily uses three blockchain platforms for the development of its products – Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Sawtooth and Ethereum.
On March 6, it was revealed that around eight million government-issued documents are currently hosted on five blockchains owned and managed by India's National Informatics Centre, a government agency.
The five blockchain products currently in use in India are certificate chain, document chain, pharmaceutical logistics chain, judicial chain and asset chain.
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