The NFT.NYC event was a great opportunity to do a deep dive into how early developers are leveraging the characteristics of non-fungible tokens on the blockchain.

We were all in a common sandbox, trying stuff on, and getting feedback on our product and market assumptions.

I approached my panel on NFTs for Good, thinking in the language of philanthropy and charitable giving, talking about the learnings the team had gleamed from our experiences with the Honu the CryptoKitty charity auction.

I came away with a new perspective, understanding that my view was too narrow, and the philanthropic narrative not inclusive enough for the magnitude of the changes we were setting in motion.

When my friend and true industry maven Bill Tai spoke to me about active philanthropy and conservation, I was thinking more about how we can take the friction out of giving. From there creating a natural connection between things of great import and rarity, and communities that could become their supporting lifelines.

We would preserve things of indigenous value, coalesce around shared emotions, donate as a way to act on our beliefs, and create a cycle that is positive, preserving and self perpetuating.

It is that certainly, but much more.

In my chat at the event with the futurist John Clippinger, it became clear that I was not fully embracing the possibilities of what Bill was suggesting.

That the true magic of what NFTs bring is making a leap to an entirely new economy of impact. The idea of an ecological economy that is based on natural and human rhythms, created where the ethics and needs of people meet the values of a positive balance sheet.

A truly different, broad-based economic and social vision.

Where conservation is not the antidote to society’s excesses, rather a building block of how we design a different economic future without the negative ballast.

And in this instance, the broader the palate of thought, the greater the touch points where conservation, community and true markets come together. And likewise, the more it unleashes the creative possibilities of what we can accomplish.

Let me back up a bit.

I realize that the blockchain and NFTs are obscure ideas to many. But there is a way to think about them as tangible tools for game designers, behavioral marketers, conservationists, technologist and scientists working together to rethink responsible economics and new cultural norms. With a new language and narrative, not reactive, but fresh, tied to where we are going not as a response to where we have been.

In the simplest terms, NFTs are a wrapper that can instantiate tokens which hold the value of a thing, carrying programmable and dynamic metadata with it. Naturally imbued with emotive value by our connection with a real objects, like the inexplicable magnificence of endangered species, or a reborn coral reef, or the wonders of an ancient shipwreck that somehow can be surfaced to change our current world in a better way.

This enables us to create something quite different from how we might conceive of a cryptocurrency, subject to a slew of ineffable market forces, the mechanics of exchanges, and the flurries of speculation.

When we tokenize things of inherent value in the real world, we are in effect, memorializing them into a sharable, experiential form not in one market or exchange, but cross communities as the very definition of interoperability.

In effect, we are taking the essential components of a marketplace stack—provenance, liquidity, value, security and scarcity—and using them as a series of characteristics in our tool chest to memorialize something of inherent rarity in a dynamic, communal, and economizing way.

The other big ahaa for me coming away from the event, was that I was thinking mostly about living, endangered things from a philanthropic view, not realizing that NFTs can also wrap data, and agreements as contracts as well.

Our personal data on our cell phone as a token for example. Dynamic contracts with new power sources perhaps, that can support people, sustain a future environment, and create new value while the tide of sustainability rises with it.

Where scale enforces preservation, not challenges it.

Where as John Clippinger suggested to me, the data marketplace behind ideas like a Smart City could belong not to Google, but with NFTs, to each of us as individuals tied together at the intersection of our wrapped data like atomic pieces in a decentralized network.

This simple connecting power of an NFT can unlock the most profound impact, inspiring the potential for creative, intertwined, economic and ecological design.

This isn’t a collectibles market vision, but a much broader schema that will roll out in unforeseen ways that could change parts of our world order cross communities around common grounded beliefs.

To illustrate my own early thinking on this, take look at some of these innovative projects–Last of Ours in Bangkok, CryptoCorals in Paris, Po8 in the Bahamas, and Swytch here in the states.

They are all at a formative place, quite wonderful,  imaginative, unique, and illustrative in their own way of an impact economy made possible by a community of shared beliefs harnessing the power of the blockchain with the tokenizing utility of NFTs.

I am all in on this.

This is the good stuff of how technology can help us make the world a better place for everyone, forever.

I am as well considering taking this idea on the road, so if there are venues to speak at or projects I should know about, please ping me.