Shruti Nair and Anil Narasipuram, a couple from Pune, got married via blockchain technology from the OpenSea platform in what is being billed as the first ‘blockchain wedding’ in India.

The two exchanged vows in the presence of a 'digital priest' while being seated in front of their computers. Friends and families of the couple attended the 15-minute-long 'blockchain wedding' via Google Meet.

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The online ceremony took place after Anil and Shruti had a formal courthouse wedding in Pune in November last year. The couple documented their digital wedding on social media platforms, which went viral weeks later.

"Shruti and I made our marriage 'blockchain official' with an Ethereum smart contract that consecrated our commitment to each other in the form of an NFT minted on OpenSea," Narasipuram wrote on LinkedIn.

Not the first such wedding

Although a first in India, blockchain weddings have happened before. In April last year, two employees at cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase tied the knot by exchanging digital non-fungible token (NFT) rings using smartphones on the blockchain. NFTs, which can be stored in ledgers or Digi wallets, can be any object in digital format. With NFTs, people can buy and sell ownership of unique digital items and also use blockchain to keep track of who owns them.

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San Francisco-based Jewish couple Rebecca Rose and Peter Kacherginsky used Ethereum’s blockchain to send each other digital tokens called Tabaat, which in Hebrew means ring. The digital rings were stored on blockchain as a proof of marriage.

The first blockchain wedding

Despite the recent hype, this event has been happening since 2014, when the first 'blockchain marriage' was held at Disney World's Bitcoin Conference in Florida.

Entrepreneur David Mondrus and Joyce Bayo, the first couple to get married on the blockchain, added their wedding vows to the Bitcoin blockchain.

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“For better or worse, til’ death do us part, because the blockchain is forever” were the words exchanged by Joyce and David during their wedding, Cointelegraph reported.

Ethereum wedding

In 2016, for their first anniversary, Hudson Jameson had created and deployed the first Solidity marriage contract on the Ethereum blockchain for his wife Laura Penrod. A Solidity contract allows a person to record major life events on the chain, which can be used to check the status of the relationship.

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“Coding my marriage contract using Ethereum’s Solidity programming language was easy, and you can submit the transaction yourself rather than relying on a third-party, Bitcoin-based, proof-of-existence service,” Jameson had said.

In the Metaverse

Back in India, a couple from Tamil Nadu on February 6 hosted their wedding reception on the Metaverse, an online universe of interconnected 3D virtual worlds. A start-up called TardiVerse worked for a month to create a Harry Potter's Hogwarts-themed Metaverse for the couple, Dinesh S.P. and Janaganandhini Ramaswamy.

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“I am into blockchain, NFTs, and technology for the past few years. I used to be always unique and I wanted to keep my life event as a memorable one," ANI had quoted Dinesh as saying earlier.

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(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)