Taiwan NFT Community Coin Token for Favored Candidates | News from Taiwan

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — As candidates drum up votes through phone calls, street rallies and campaign meetings ahead of Saturday’s (Nov 26) local elections, some of their supporters are using non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to engage with like-minded fans in the metaverse.

Over 100 NFT items representing images of three Taipei mayoral leaders were recently spotted on Web 3.0 marketplace OpenSea ahead of Taiwan’s nine-in-one local elections. Among them, NFTs representing independent Taipei mayoral candidate Huang Shan-shan (黃珊珊) outnumber her main rivals – lawmaker Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安), who is running for the Kuomintang (KMT), and Chen Shih-chung (鸭), 時former Minister of Health and Welfare who is running for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the mayoral race.

After announcing his mayoral bid in late August, Huang ventured into the metaverse and set up a virtual campaign office, publishing his campaign literature and vision for the city in 3D cyberspace.

Huang is known for leading the city’s data-driven and real-time COVID-19 dashboard that constantly visualizes data to enable city officials to provide rapid responses to the pandemic. The dashboard is part of the city’s artificial intelligence-enabled smart urban solutions program.

Huang is not the first mayoral candidate to delve into the metaverse to promote campaigns. On August 1, the city’s mayoral candidate Tung Wen-hsun (童文薰), a New York media personality and lawyer, rolled out a campaign parade in the metaverse, believed to be the first of its kind in the country, where the rally. participants can interact with other supporters with their own digital avatar.

NFTs from the Taipei mayoral race in front

In the real world, Chiang has a small lead, but Huang, Chiang and Chen each come out on top in at least one poll, and pre-election polls relating to candidates are banned from publication ten days before the election is held. In cyberspace, local NFT community users mint NFTs through a prototype launch platform provided by FormosaVerse for free, for their favorite candidates.

Web3-as-a-Service (WaaS) solution provider FormosaVerse told a reporter from Taiwan News that it created a prototype of three tokens for the three leaders of the Taipei mayoral race. Holders can download the digital files to their NFT wallets, convert their desired prototype into a non-fungible token, and finally launch their unique token on OpenSea. Each holder can set a price for his or her NFT token representing his or her chosen candidate.

Vincent Hsieh, co-founder of FormsaVerse, explained that each token comes with a hyperlink that directs users to the campaign literature of each candidate listed on the Central Election Commission website.

When asked about the rationale for issuing the NFT project “Campaign Rally,” Hsieh said it is designed to raise political awareness among young voters, who make up a large part of the NFT community. Moreover, he added, the launch of such tokens, a product of Web 3.0, has a symbolic meaning, as the defining features of Web 3.0 are “openness, accessibility, freedom and decentralization, which puts control back into the hands of users based on blockchain”. technology, as proponents of Web 3.0 have believed.”

“It can to some extent revive democratic values ​​both on the internet and at the societal level,” he said.

Hsieh also revealed a secret about the NFT tokens during this project. “Those holding the pieces representing the winning candidate will find a slight change in the symbol image after election day.”

A total of 120 such tokens are now listed on OpenSea at the time of publication, and the number continues to grow as the election is just three days away.

Screebgrab image of the FormosaVerse Campaign Rally’s analysis page on OpenSea.