DESCRIPTION

TECHNOLOGICAL BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Field of application.

The present invention relates to a method for processing digital images intended to give rise to authenticated exchangeable and fungible digital objects.

Description of the prior art.

The phenomenon of fractional NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) has recently emerged in the growing field of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).

The market and the strong growth of NFTs are of recent origin and are associated with the diffusion of blockchain technology (also known as DLT, Distributed Ledger Technology).

As is well known, an NFT is a special type of token which, among the various possibilities, can represent the title deed and written certificate of authenticity on blockchains of a unique asset of digital type.

NFTs are used in different specific applications which require unique digital objects.

Among the various applications, NFTs have allowed the circulation in unregulated markets of so-called “tokenized” images which are accessible and verifiable through DLT, thus giving value to certain digitalized or digital works.

More recently, there has also been the possibility of fractioning a single NFT (by means of the aforesaid “Fractional NFT” technology) in order to allow access by several users to a set of rights or portions of the same NFT (which are variable according to the specific NFT), thus creating a “democratization” of the access to the same asset/product.

The fungibility of the single fractions following the fragmentation process associated with, for example, mechanisms at times applied to Fractional NFTs and variants thereof, is not however a guaranteed result, especially if the latter represent fragments of the original image and given that, by definition, the starting NFTs are “not fungible” by nature.

On the other hand, the fungibility of the single fractions appears increasingly to be a desirable property for different reasons.

The fungibility of the fractions increases the economic value thereof, thus ensuring increased exchangeability. Fungibility is in fact an attribute of an asset which has significant economic value because it facilitates the exchange, diffusion and liquidity thereof without, for example, each time having to reverify the value or wonder what is involved, thus in fact slowing down the possibility of being exchanged. With reference to the importance of fungibility, think, for example, of one Euro coins with respect to the possibility of having coins all mutually different, which would make the possibility of an actual use thereof very slow and would slow down the circulation thereof.

Moreover, also from a jurisprudential viewpoint, the European legislator places large importance on fungibility, up to make explicit reference thereto in Directive MIFID II (Directive 2014/65/EU and the relative delegated regulations, including Delegated Regulation 565 of 2017) which legislates Markets in Financial Instruments for all instruments which can circulate during regulated negotiations. For example, MIFID II (Art. 8(f) of Delegated Regulation 565) says that “any other asset or right of a fungible nature” can be the underlying of financial instruments or derivatives.

Fungibility is an essential precondition for creating financial instruments and accessing Regulated Markets. On a global level, all instruments in listed financial markets are fungible by nature, just think of two or more stocks of the same company or two bonds of the same issuer with the same maturity date, and the same also applies for derivatives (those who trade these products within the same type always and in any case trade fungible products).

Currently, with regard to such financial, economic, legislative requirements, there is no technological solution capable of providing digital entities which, starting from the same image, are fractionable and fungible.

Thus, the need to find an adequate technological answer to the new “fragmentation” process (the results of which we call “micro-fractions”) of single digital images (specifically, photographic digital images) which has become increasingly important even in light of the recent phenomenon of Fractional Non-Fungible Tokens (Fractional NFTs), and simultaneously make such micro-fractions of images “fungible” (for example, based on the definitions in compliance with the aforesaid “MIFID II”) so as to facilitate the exchanges thereof, is now still not completely met.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

It is an object of the present invention to provide a method for processing digital images intended to give rise to authenticated exchangeable and fungible digital objects, which allows at least partially obviating the drawbacks mentioned above with reference to the prior art, and to respond to the aforementioned needs particularly felt in the technical field considered.

Such an object is achieved by a method according to claim 1.

Further embodiments of such a method are defined in claims 2-16.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Further features and advantages of the method according to the invention will become apparent from the following description of preferred embodiments, given by way of non-limiting indication, with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:

- Figure 1 shows a fractioning of a digital image into fragments, according to an embodiment of the method according to the invention;

- Figures 2A and 2B show a digital image to which the present method can be applied and an example of (enlarged) reconstruction of such a digital image based on 10% of digital fragments thereof, respectively, obtained by means of an embodiment of the fragmentation method according to the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

A method for fragmenting digital images intended to give rise to authenticated and exchangeable and fungible digital objects is described.

The method first comprises the step of fragmenting the aforesaid digital image into a plurality of fragments, in which each fragment corresponds to a respective microfraction of digital image, in which each digital image fragment (i.e., micro-fraction) is fungible.

The fact that each digital image fragment is fungible implies that each of such fragments (i.e., micro-fractions) represents an extremely minute portion of digital image which is substantially indistinguishable and equivalent to every other fragment (i.e., micro-fraction) of the same digital image.

It should be also noted that the fractioning into micro-fractions is carried out so that the sum of all the digital image fragments (i.e., micro-fractions) deriving from the aforesaid digital image allows reconstructing the whole original digital image.

Then method then provides authenticating each fragment (i.e., micro-fraction) of the aforesaid plurality of micro-fractions of digital image so as to generate a respective plurality of fractioned fungible and authenticated digital objects, each corresponding to an authenticated fragment (i.e., micro-fraction).

The aforesaid fragmentation step comprises:

- defining a number N of fragments into which the digital image is to be fractioned;

- dividing the digital image into pixels and/or fractions of pixels; - generating each fragment of the aforesaid plurality of digital image fragments so that all the fragments have the same dimension and/or resolution, corresponding to a group of pixels or to one pixel, or to a group of fractions of pixels, or to a single fraction of pixel, or to a combination of one or more pixels and one or more sub-pixels, based on the aforesaid predefined number N of fragments.

“Resolution” (defined at times in this description also as “dimension”) means in this description the (integer or fractional) number of pixels forming a digital image or a fragment thereof, for example, divided into number of pixels for each two-dimensional axis.

According to an embodiment of the method, given the predefined number of fragments and the original resolution of the digital image, in pixels, the aforesaid fragmenting step further comprises calculating the resolution of each micro-fraction as the integer or decimal number given by the quotient of the original dimension of the image in pixels by the predefined number N of fragments.

In particular, according to an implementation option of such an embodiment, given the predefined number of fragments and the original resolution of the digital image in pixels, the aforesaid fragmentation step comprises the initial division of the digital image into n rows and m columns such that the number of rows n by the number of columns m is equal to the total number of fragments N. The width and the height of the initial image are then divided by the number of columns m and the number of rows n, respectively, thus obtaining a pair of values a and b which define the resolution of each fragment. Therefore, in this case, there is a number of pixels (whole and/or fractions) in each fragment equal to a x b = A. For example, Figure 1 shows a digital image divided into N fragments, according to a matrix of n rows and m columns (naturally, for the purposes of the illustration, the number of rows and columns is very small; in real cases typical of the application of the method, the numbers m and n are much larger).

Each fragment has a resolution of “a” pixels in width and “b” pixels in height, i.e., it comprises a total number of pixels (resolution) equal to A = a x b.

The total number of pixels (resolution) R of the digital image is thus less than or equal to A x N, and is hence increased by the value obtained by multiplying the resolutions of the single fragments, i.e., (a x n) x (b x m). The increase occurs if there are pixels shared by overlapping fragments.

For example, single overlapping fragments means that if in the original digital image of 7 pixels (px) in width corresponding to two fragments of 4 px each, each fragment would be the result of 3.5 pixels and 0.5 empty pixels. Thus, adding the areas of two fragments of 4 px obtains a dimension of 8 which is a majorant of 7.

According to another implementation technique aiming to obtain the information contained originally, the information contained in the single fragments is added after positioning the fragments in a matrix having a dimension equal to the original resolution.

The example shown in Figure 1 relates to an integer number of pixels per fragment but (as also described hereinbelow in greater detail) the numbers involved can also be decimals and/or fractions.

To give an idea of the orders of magnitude involved, by mere way of example, an example is provided here of a fragmentation method implemented on a digital image representing the painting “Mona Lisa” where R (image resolution) is equal to 3000 x 4471 pixels (for a total of 13,413,000 pixels); N (number of fragments) is equal to 6,000,000; A is equal to R/N = 2.2355 (in this case, decimal).

According to an implementation option, each fragment is constructed as a grouping of whole pixels and fractions of pixels, with a number of whole pixels equal to the integer part of the aforesaid fragment resolution, and with a number of fractions of pixels, belonging to other contiguous pixels, corresponding to the decimal part of the aforesaid fragment resolution.

In particular, according to an implementation example, each fragment is constructed by grouping together a number of integer pixels and/or fractions of pixels equal to A. In each fragment, the number of integer pixels is equal to the number of whole pixels within the resolution a x b of the fragment itself. Similarly, the number of fractions of pixels is equal to the number of fragments of pixels (contiguous to the whole pixels of that fragment) present in the resolution a x b of that fragment.

According to another implementation option, each fragment is constructed as a grouping of fractions of pixels belonging to adjacent pixels so as to achieve the total number A of pixels.

According to another implementation option, if the number of pixels of the digital image is a multiple of the number of fragments to be generated, the aforesaid number of pixels of each fragment is selected equal to one pixel or to a group of pixels, in which each group comprises a number of pixels equal to the quotient of the number of pixels of the digital image by the number of fragments to be generated.

According to an implementation option, the number of pixels of each fragment is equal to one.

According to an embodiment of the method, each fraction of pixel corresponds to one or more bits forming the pixel according to the image digital coding with which the digital image is coded.

In this case, the minimum unit of division corresponds to a single bit of the aforesaid bits in which the pixel is coded.

According to an implementation option, if the predefined number of fragments is not a multiple of the aforesaid minimum unit of division, the method comprises determining a corrected number of fragments as similar as possible to the predefined number of fragments, such that the corrected number of fragments is a multiple of the aforesaid minimum unit of division.

According to an implementation option, each fragment consists of a plurality of the aforesaid minimum units of division belonging to the same pixel or to adjacent pixels.

According to different possible implementation options, the coding is possible on different file formats, including PNG, JPG, and BMP.

According to a particular implementation option, each pixel is divided into multiples of 8 bits starting from the third multiple (24, 32, etc.).

According to an embodiment of the method, each fragment (i.e., micro-fraction) consists of one or more whole pixels and/or one or more partial pixels, and/or a combination of one or more whole pixels and one or more partial pixels.

In this case, each whole pixel consists of a vector containing the bits by which the respective pixel is coded, and each partial pixel consists of a vector containing the information bits by which the selected fraction of the original whole pixel is coded, in the respective positions, and a 0 value in the other positions.

According to different possible implementation options, the step of authenticating each fragment of the aforesaid plurality of digital image fragments so as to generate a respective plurality of fractioned fungible and authenticated digital objects, each corresponding to an authenticated fragment, is performed according to technologies known per se, based on Distributed Ledger Technology, DLT and/or Blockchain technology.

According to an embodiment, the method comprises the further step of reaggregating a plurality of fragments into a group of fragments which in turn are fungible.

According to an embodiment of the method, the generated fungible fragments and/or the fungible reaggregated groups of fragments are such that a complete reaggregation results in the original digital image.

As can be noted, the object of the present invention is fully achieved by the method disclosed above by virtue of the respective functional and structural features.

In this respect, the following further observations should be considered.

With reference to the fungibility of the fragments (i.e., of the fractions of images) if, for example, a digital reproduction of the Mona Lisa were to be taken and divided into simple fractions, however of small dimensions, it is highly probable that they would not be fungible because, for example, one fraction could represent an eye of the Mona Lisa and another could be a strip of the dress. The two fractions in this case would not be fungible because that representing the eye would have a much greater value than that representing the strip of the garment. As a result, a mere fractioning of a digital work does not provide any guarantee as to the fungibility of the components thereof, which furthermore, would be highly improbable.

Such an eventuality is a huge problem in the face of needs for so-called “democratization of assets or rights”, as in the case of “Fractional NFT” on images or variants thereof, because if equal access is to be given to an increased number of participants in the asset so that each one has a similar part thereof, it is important for the fractioning mechanism to ensure, from a merely technical viewpoint, and specifically by means of an algorithm applied to the images, that the fractions can be considered as fungible by nature. As mentioned above, this would incentivize the efficient exchange of the fractions among the recipients thereof, thus increasing the potential circulation, exchangeability, liquidity, and economic value thereof.

As shown above, the solution herein described is that of dividing the images into a very large number of fragments, i.e., fractions (actually, “micro-fractions”) so that they are absolutely fungible.

Therefore, the number of micro-fractions into which the image is divided is a very large quantity (from various thousands to millions, based on the dimensions of the original image or based on the number of micro-fractions to be obtained ex ante, at the time of the fractioning of the digital work, for example, 20 million) so as to also make the micro-fractions fungible and very similar to one another in the unit value and also once they are aggregated in the same proportions.

Indeed, having 5% or 10% of the micro-fractions of a work has an entirely similar value with respect to those having the same percentages.

The algorithm disclosed in the present patent application allows dividing the image into a very large number of fragments (i.e., micro-fractions) by dividing the image, either directly into the pixels forming it, or by breaking up the pixels when required, or by grouping them together, based on the number of fragments to be obtained, and allows the reaggregation thereof should other fragments be purchased, for example.

By mere way of example, Figure 2B shows an example of reconstruction of a digital image (that is shown in scaled down form, as reference, in Figure 2A) based on 10% of digital fragments thereof, in which the digital fragments are obtained by means of an embodiment of the fragmentation method according to the present invention.

Figure 2B shows the digital fragments (or micro-fractions) of the digital image which appear in this example as “dots” scattered in the enlarged depiction of the reconstruction of the digital image.

In order to meet contingent needs, those skilled in the art may make changes and adaptations to the embodiments of the method described above or can replace elements with others which are functionally equivalent, without departing from the scope of the following claims. Each of the features described above as belonging to one possible embodiment can be implemented irrespective of the other embodiments described.