Among the many changes that NFT technology has generated recently is our newfound ability to memorialize historical moments and cultural artifacts. In this way, we can now engrain important parts of our story and our culture in history forever. While museums and cultural heritage sites have never been attracted to new technology, growing NFT technology is now offering them the chance to preserve their treasures indefinitely.
Why NFTs work well as a store of history and culture
With high fidelity, realistic 3D images, NFT technology reproduces famous historical sites, monuments in lifelike form. This makes NFTs attractive to historians and institutions that want to make cultural heritage widely available to the public. In this way, members of the public do not need to visit a physical site to experience history – they can merely purchase the NFT version of the historical experience and enjoy it from any part of the world. At the same time, the museums and cultural sites selling these NFTs can use money from the sales to fund the maintenance of their physical sites.
While a brick-and-mortar museum or cultural heritage site can be attacked and destroyed, NFTs store and transport data in digital form. NFT technology helps reproduce historical treasures in an indestructible form. In fact, the Ukrainian government is currently in the process of leveraging this property of NFT technology. In the midst of the Russian invasion, museums and heritage sites are getting destroyed. Transforming their cultural artifacts into NFT form has been an effective way of ensuring that these pieces of history live on beyond these endangered sites.
Simply put, owning a historic experience or a cultural artifact in NFT form creates a realistic and mobile immersive experience that you can carry around and enjoy wherever you go. You don’t need to worry about transporting expensive pieces of art when you’re moving. While the possibility of a museum getting torched is still a tragedy, it’s not as devastating if they’ve converted their valuable objects into NFT form that the world can still enjoy.
The Moving Images NFT collection marks a historical moment in England
On May 24, 2022, Transport for London (TfL) launched their most recent tube line, a line named in honour of Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee. The queen herself visited Paddington Station to officially open the Elizabeth line.
On the same day of the Elizabeth line opening, Moving Images created and minted the first and only NFT collection celebrating this historical milestone in the British monarchy. The collection consists of 70 pieces, each piece commemorating one year of the queen’s Platinum Jubilee. These NFTs are available for sale on OpenSea.
“These are the first Elizabeth line NFTs in existence, and they celebrate an important milestone for Queen Elizabeth II,” says Moving Images founder Christian Walker. “Buying one of these NFTs gives you an opportunity to own a piece of history.”
What’s the driving force behind Moving Images?
Moving Images is much more than just the NFT project with the first NFT collection designed to commemorate the opening of the Elizabeth line. This blockchain NFT initiative is designed to tackle the climate crisis by making collectible, limited-release, one-of-a-kind NFTs whose profits are directed to environmental charities.
How other NFT artists are contributing to the environment
NFT artists and content creators who are environment-conscious tend to struggle to create NFT art once they’re aware of how damaging it is to the environment. Once this realization hits, many artists who have just ventured into the NFT space go back to creating art without NFT technology, opting out of the NFT model altogether. Other artists would rather stay in the NFT sphere and create NFT art that educates the public on the environmental impact of NFT technology.
Aside from educating NFT buyers, many NFT developers who opt to stay in the NFT space prefer to do something more concrete to reduce their energy consumption. Alternatively, some of these developers find ways to contribute to environmental conservation efforts through their work.
Use Proof-of-Stake (PoS) instead of Proof-of-Work
Some NFT marketplaces have switched to Proof-of-Stake over Proof-of-Work as a verification mechanism. PoS consumes less energy because it doesn’t rely on miners solving complex equations to verify a transaction. Rather, PoS requires users to “stake” some of their cryptocurrency as collateral. A user can lose this collateral if they make a mistake during the verification process.
Ethereum actually has plans to switch from PoW to PoS, in which case the platforms transactions will consume a lot less energy.
Sell NFTs with a carbon offset
In order to cut down on the detrimental effects that their art has on the environment, some artists sell their NFT art with carbon offsets. Some marketplaces have also started selling carbon offsets with the art they host.
Build on the blockchain
Instead of performing all the NFT-related transactions on the blockchain, it’s also possible to build a separate chain off the blockchain. This chain can be used to perform transactions without PoW, after which the group of transactions can be upended to the blockchain at once. This would consume much less energy.
Ethereum has partnered with StarkWare to develop an off-chain layer like this. This would cut down on the amount of energy it takes to process the transactions for one NFT.
How Moving Images is contributing to environmental conservation
By donating their profits to environmental charities that are selected every quarter, the team at Moving Images is contributing to vital environmental work. Beyond this, they’re also working on a new digital currency that channels transaction fees to environmental conservation efforts.
In order to create NFTs that are appealing to NFT collectors, this team captures unique images from all over the world during their travels. These images revolve around themes of nature and travel and are the inspiration for the NFTs. Each NFT that is created is one-of-a-kind, and the team is committed to ensuring that no two of the same NFT will ever exist. This first collection – the Elizabeth line collection – is a truly collectible set.
By creating limited-edition NFTs, Moving Images is giving the world the chance to own valuable, one-of-a-kind NFTs. More importantly, the Moving Images team is creating art for a better world.
Click here to invest in Moving Images, own a piece of history and contribute to environmental conservation. You can also get updates on the current collection as well as upcoming collections on Instagram.