Merely Art?
Non-fungible tokens, also known as NFTS, have emerged as an innovative way for artists to have more creative freedom and control over their work. Due to the legitimate scarcity made verifiable by blockchain technology, buyers of NFTs can be assured that their purchase is both authenticate and certified. This gives digital art minted as an NFT real value that wasn’t quite possible in the digital art space.
Such “tokens” are unique, tradeable pieces of information that exist on the Ethereum blockchain. Tokens have special properties unlike other forms of digital information: they can be bought, sold, or even invested (“staked”).
As tokens are traded, sold, staked and even burned on the blockchain, it requires miners to run computations and run the network. Naturally, this leads to environmental consequences as energy is utilized for these operations. Offsetra has been exploring these consequences and working to collaborate with stakeholders in the digital currency space to address these impacts.
Intersection of Art, Sustainability and Finance
Sven Eberwein is one of these stakeholders. He is a digital artist that works at the intersection of computer graphics and internet culture. His works emerge from references he collects around the “World Wild Web” and set to explore their impact and relevance in new contexts. In his words, he produces “Works of the internet, by the internet, for the internet.”
Sven worked with us to offset the carbon emissions from his pool contract address at MEME — making it the first, carbon-neutral NFT release. Don’t Buy Meme is an innovative, experimental platform for digital artists to explore new avenues to share and tokenize their works.
M Carbon Dioxide
M Carbon Dioxide is one of his latest works of art and represents 1000 tonnes of CO2 formerly purchased and retired as verified credit units (VCUs) on the Verra registry and minted to the blockchain as an NFT. The amount of CO2 offset by this NFT is equivalent to the emissions that person living in an industrialized country would emit over the course of 40 years. To give context, the typical roundtrip transatlantic flight from NYC to London emits 2 tonnes of CO2 per passenger seated in economy class. Thus, this NFT represents 500 such flights!
The offsets identified and selected for this artwork were derived from Offsetra’s sustainability project portfolio. The Bull Run project and the Cerro de Hula project were both selected during the creation of this NFT. To read more about these projects and their co-benefits, visit Offsetra’s website here.
To view this art listing:
https://superrare.co/artwork-v2/m-carbon-dioxide-15566
To view the documented VCUs retired for this NFT:
https://registry.verra.org/myModule/rpt/myrpt.asp?r=206&h=26848
https://registry.verra.org/myModule/rpt/myrpt.asp?r=206&h=32994
For additional reading on digital currencies and their climate impact: https://medium.com/@offsetra/the-climate-impact-of-cryptocurrencies-f5c575c83052
Visit us: offsetra.com
Email us: info@offsetra.com
Chat to us: twitter.com/offsetra
