#61 | Kia Funds 22,000 Pet Homes Through NFTs

NFT developments from Dubai's first real life NFT store, Kia's Robo Dog NFTs funding pet shelters, and Taiwanese Temple leveraging NFTs for tourism

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BuckyGang 💫 & subvert 😸
January 05, 2023

Estimated Read Time: 8 minutes

Hey friends,

A warm welcome back to another 2023 edition of Morning NFTea! We have some great NFT stories that continue to redefine the idea of this “digital” technology as we see it impact many parts of our physical world from a mall store, to pet shelters, and ancient temples. Let's jump into it!

First-Of-Its-Kind Physical NFT Shop Opens In Dubai

A common misconception with Web3 and NFTs is the thought of it segregating our physical and digital worlds, when in fact it's quite the opposite. As our everyday lives continue to incorporate more and more of the internet and our digital devices, Web3 is enabling a brand new frontier that closes the gap between our physical and digital identities. An interesting example of Web3 not being restricted to the virtual world is the recent opening of the first-of-its-kind ftNFT shop, located at the Dubai Mall of the Emirates where visitors can now browse, buy and sell NFTs, all in person.

Highlighting a trend in physical/virtual stores, this new store was created to bring together NFT and crypto enthusiasts to a platform where they can interact with and experience innovative services in a whole new way. As per ftNFT, “The shops are made to be a gateway to digital art, music, and other ways of creating, utilizing, and monetizing the Non-Fungible Tokens”. ftNFT can almost be thought of as a futuristic art gallery, but cooler — where in addition to a purchasable gallery, you can also find a 3D scanner to create custom VR avatars, and even physical NFTs that can be uniquely personalized and interacted with through your actual senses.

On the store's opening, guests could attend through a special NFT ticket that gave them the opportunity to meet and socialise with NFT artists and exhibitors in person. Even if you weren't there for the special launch, the store is still sure to act as a collaborative hub for those interested as they stroll through the mall, truly exemplifying how the “digital” world of NFTs is facilitating new opportunities IRL.

Kia Automotive Funds 22,000 Pet Shelters Through NFTs

Automotive brands continue to be ahead of the pack in Web3 and NFTs. Where last edition we had Rolls-Royce including NFTs in their cars, and just before that we saw Aston Martin's drivable NFT cars or Porsche and BMW’s NFT collections, but standing out from the pack is Kia’s use of NFTs to fund 22,000 homes for animals. As the fifth best-selling automotive brand in the U.S, Kia is another household brand that isn't afraid of leveraging NFTs and Web3, and in doing so released Robo Dog NFTs (The Robo Dog from Kia's Super Bowl ad) on the Tezos blockchain. Arguably you could call this a marketing stunt, but you can't argue the 90% of primary sales and all of the 10% royalties on secondary sales that have greatly benefitted The Petfinder Foundation nonprofit that works to relieve overcrowded animal shelters.

A spokesperson said, “Kia wanted to do something different with the popularity of NFTs as well as the anticipated popularity of Robo Dog from the Super Bowl spot”. Since Kia America launched these 10,000 “adoption pass” NFTs back in February, recent results have shown that the proceeds have contributed to 22,422 pet shelters, which means a whole lot of animals saved! Well done indeed.

As we continue to see more and more unique ways for this wonderful new technology to be used, a top automotive brand using NFTs to give vulnerable animals new homes is definitely something we can tick off our use-case bingo card.

Taiwanese Temple Sells NFTs

Located about 100 miles south of Taiwan's capital Taipei, lies an extraordinary 100-mile journey to see a statue of the sea goddess Mazu. Organised by the Dajia Jenn Lann temple, this pilgrimage attracts hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic participants. These related attractions are at the center of a “Mazu economy” that drives donations and spending on Mazu-themed merchandise and business opportunities throughout the region.

In a progressive effort to engage a new demographic and re-invent the idea of tourist merch, participants of the journey can now take home a literal forever souvenir as a MazuDAO NFT, which also acts as a priority pass for them on the nine-day journey.

“We had to set up promotional booths in front of the temple to introduce MazuDAO NFTs”, and although many of the elders do not even have smartphones, the temple's team would “ask them to call for their grandchildren to help out and set up crypto wallets on their behalf.”

Jerry Yan, Project Lead of MazuDAO

This acts as another example of how NFTs are opening up brand new monetization methods to fund initiatives, while offering consumers unique digital assets that open new utilities and uses. The temple has so far sold more than 2,800 of these sea goddess NFTs, further showing how NFT technology acts as an exciting new opportunity home to inventive and innovative projects that touch multiple generations and cultures.

Big thanks for taking the time to catch up on today’s Morning NFTea, we hope you have a great couple of days while we curate the next round-up, but until then, take care and we hope you have a great start to 2023!

What's the NFTea?

Apart from the ongoing $BONK craze on Solana Beach that we pointed out in our last newsletter, the center of the NFT world this week has been in Hong Kong, where web2 goliath 9GAG successfully launched its Memeland Captainz mint yesterday, minting out in roughly 11 minutes.

The mint itself used a unique deposit mechanism that used an API to enable 'deposits' which would either return an airdropped mint, or a full refund. Established developer cygaar wrote up a thread breaking out the technical details:

Rising tides float all boats, and the high demand for Captainz also caused a spike in interest for Kubz —— since founder Keung received close to 200 Captainz in return for help in contract development as well as the project partnership.

Kubz minted on Christmas Day with an auction mint which settled at a relatively high mint price of 0.469, which made certain collectors rather unhappy and caused Keung himself to put out a thread addressing the situation.

Seeing the floor skyrocket to 1.6 ETH post-Captainz mint forced greb to eat his words and issue a public apology to Keung regarding Kubz.

What an entertaining twist of events... and it shows how quickly the NFT space moves!

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DISCLAIMER:

None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.