plant-based NFTs: Pioneering Carbon Removal through Art and Technology

Carbon removal represents one of the fastest-growing solutions in the fight against climate change, and it will now be accessible to everyone via a first-of-its-kind NFT project.

On August 2nd, 2024, artist and technologist Cyrus Clarke, is launching plant-based: a (re)generative, plant-themed NFT collection powered by Toucan's new Green NFT extension in collaboration with Coinbase and fxhash.

This collection of plant-themed NFTs attaches existing, verifiable carbon removal credits with generative art for the first time; and makes that accessible to the masses. 

Cyrus Clarke’s designs for plant-based celebrate the beauty of nature, while helping its holders make an immediate, real-world climate impact. Never before have individuals been able to buy verifiable carbon removal via NFTs. 

To accomplish this, each NFT is embedded with 10 kg of verified carbon removal from biochar projects certified through leading biochar standard Puro.earth. The carbon is tracked and sourced via Toucan’s CHAR pool. 

“Traditionally, climate action has been motivated by altruism. But with digital products and experiences, we can now create new incentives to drive consumer participation in climate action. This opens up a new world of creativity for climate-minded artists and builders."

Raphael Haupt, CEO Toucan

Designed from Nature, for Nature

Inspiration for plant-based’s art comes from the natural life cycles of plants — germination, growth, pollination, and mutation. The series progresses across generations, with artworks that abstract further from their botanical origins, exploring diverse themes like digital waste, video games, capitalism, and artistic tributes. 

All NFTs in this collection feature a generative, looping cyclical animation that sweeps across the canvas. Every NFT is embedded with 0.01 CHAR, which represents 10 kg of carbon that has been removed from the atmosphere and verified by the monitoring and auditing of carbon removal suppliers systems by Puro.earth.

plant-based is more than an NFT collection. It is an artistic, community-led movement to directly address climate change with blockchain-verified carbon removals.

To make carbon embeddable within NFTs, Toucan developed a revolutionary Green NFT Extension, a periphery contract that associates NFT token IDs with the underlying carbon embedded within them. The Green NFT Extension also allows projects using the extension to embed more CHAR, retire CHAR, and remove CHAR. This new periphery contract works with any ERC-721 NFT collection, both ones in development, as well as those already launched. 

“Combining art, nature and technology is crucial to telling fresh stories that offer new perspectives and hope. plant-based does this by uniting a poetic vision of regenerative futures, with a practical implementation of emerging technologies. It’s exciting to see this vision blossom, especially within the fertile ground of web3.”

Cyrus Clarke, NFT Artist

Understanding carbon removal

Lowering the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over time is critical to ceasing the march of climate change. Reducing our emissions by preventing the burning of fossil fuels is an important part of this strategy, but we still need to remove the excess emissions we’ve already released into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is the pathway to accomplishing this. 

CDR encompasses methods which sequester carbon from the atmosphere, drawing it out of the air around us and storing it in a permanent or semi-permanent state. One of the most promising methods for doing this is biochar. Waste biomass, like leftover pieces of trees and plants from the timber or agricultural industry, is converted at a high temperature into biochar where the carbon in that waste biomass is durably locked into its molecular structure. 

The CDR credits used for plant-based are biochar credits. These credits are verified, audited, and monitored via Puro.earth, the leading carbon removal standard. Each credit represents one tonne of carbon removed from the atmosphere and brought onchain as CHAR, so they can be embedded into digital artwork, dApps, and other Web3 applications. 

How to get started with plant-based

Minting for plant-based begins August 2, 2024: Users can mint their plant-based NFTs at plantbased.art. Each NFT comes embedded with 10 kg of carbon (0.01 CHAR), ensuring a positive environmental impact from the start.

Want to integrate climate action into your own green NFT?

We have designed an NFT extension that can be used to infuse any NFT collection with carbon credits. We’d love to hear from you and are excited to support you with an extension contract specific to your collection. Reach out to us at partnerships@toucan.earth or join our builder Telegram group. 

About the creator

Cyrus Clarke: Cyrus Clarke is an award-winning designer, artist, and technologist known for his poetic use of emerging technologies to create prototypes for beautiful and regenerative futures

About the collaborators

About Toucan: Toucan is building market infrastructure to help scale the carbon removal space with efficiency, integrity and speed. 

About Coinbase: Coinbase is a secure online platform for buying, selling, transferring, and storing cryptocurrency.

About fxhash: fxhash is an open & accessible generative art platform empowering anyone to create, collect, and enjoy code-based artwork.