Can NFTs help regenerate the planet?

Raise your hand if you’re not completely convinced that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are about to take the world by storm.

There is no doubt that the NFT concept has made itself felt. Digital artists have welcomed a technology that enables them to produce single or limited artworks that can be bought and sold, with their provenance validated on the blockchain. Huge sums have changed hands and headlines have been duly grabbed. In the less rarified world of marketing, brands use so-called utility NFTs to sell tokens and logos that also give buyers special benefits, such as loyalty scheme membership or access to events.

The question is, of course, why not just enroll customers in good old-fashioned membership schemes? Is there any real use for the less than humble NFT? Or to put it another way, is there anything uniquely useful about this type of technology? Ben Whately thinks it may well be. In fact, he has set out to demonstrate that NFTs can be a force for good.

Whately cut his entrepreneurial teeth as a co-founder of Memrise, a language app that launched in 2010. While he still serves as Chief Strategy Officer of that company, he is also a co-founder of Angry Teenagers, a start-up company established last November with the goal of doing something to alleviate the problem of land degradation. NFTs are at the heart of his business’ modus operandi.

The result of frustration

As Whately tells it, the new company owes its existence, at least in part, to a frustration expressed by his teenage daughter. “She came back from a climate march and said okay, but what can we do to really make a difference,” he recalls.

The comment chimed well with Whately’s own approach to technology-driven entrepreneurship. He sees technology as a means of turning intentions into actions. “When waves of change happen, entrepreneurs create products that unleash that change,” he says.

But what does that mean in practice? In some sectors, there is a relatively simple line between demand – and the desire to do something different – ​​and the product. Whately cites Memrise as an example. Like other language apps, its job was to turn the desire to learn a language into positive action.

But can the same principle be applied to climate and the environment? Whately sees an ambition among a growing number of people to do something practical to alleviate environmental problems, but he also discovers a sense of helplessness. “What can you do?” he asks rhetorically. “You can eat less or fly less, but what kind of positive actions can you take?”

Well, you could argue that eating and flying less is some kind of positive action, but Whately was thinking of was something more practical. And that brings us to NFTs. Whately’s solution was to create Angry Teenager NFTs, which can be bought and sold on the eco-friendly Tevos blockchain. The money raised when an NFT is purchased is used to plant trees in Ghana in a district that has suffered significant environmental degradation.

Nuts and bolts

So what are the nuts and bolts of it? Well, you buy an Angry Teenagers token, and in addition to the visual artwork, your money pays for the planting of trees in a geolocated square in Land. As the trees grow, you can track the impact. Ultimately, the trees generate cash through carbon offsets, and some of that cash is reinvested in forestry projects. A certain amount is also returned to the buyer’s wallet, although this is also earmarked for reinvestment.

The token can also be sold, and access to the impact information passes to the new owner. But is there an incentive for secondary buyers? After all, the investment is already made by the original owner. Whately says that a certain amount of money is released and invested when a token changes hands – so new owners also help make a difference.

All well and good. But given the increasing pressure on land – and population increases in Africa – will this be any kind of permanent solution, or will the trees simply be cut down when commercial pressures kick in and someone wants to do something else with the land? Whately says there are financial incentives for the community. “Included in the planting areas is a percentage of fruit trees and beehives,” he says. “We have to make sure there is an economic benefit to the community.” In addition, the land is protected by a 50-year agreement.

So will this work? It should show up soon. The groundwork to identify and secure the land has been done, and Whately hopes the project will raise $100,000 for tree planting by Christmas and have a snowball effect over time.

But perhaps the question of NFT utility remains. It should be equally possible to accept donations for tree planting and provide transparent impact reports, without the benefits of NFTs and the blockchain. That said, leveraging the allure of a trending technology to raise awareness and fund a startup that combines monetization with purpose can’t be a bad thing. New low-carbon blockchain platforms – Tezos being one of them – are emerging, potentially adding to the appeal.