The Nelson Mandela Foundation has introduced a digital patronage program in the form of non-fungible tokens, providing 1,918 pioneering memberships for $1,000 each, estimated to be around $1,918,000. The NFTs’ number tally with Nelson Mandela’s birth year, a sort of obeisance to the late South Africa President and activist.
The launch, which comes ten years after Mandela’s glorious transition to the great beyond, signals the day of his inauguration in 1994 as South Africa’s first president following the disintegration of Apartheid. The Nelson Mandela Foundation has collaborated with New Zealand-based studio and NFT marketplace Glorious Digital to launch its digital patronage program.
In a statement released on Wednesday, the organization said each patronage is presented with a unique digital artwork for members to display
“Drawing on Nelson Mandela’s personal archive held by the NMF, together with other authorized collections, Nelson Mandela: A Portrait in 27 Colours will commemorate the 27 years Nelson Mandela spent in prison fighting injustice in his country.”
The Nelson Mandela Foundation
Glorious Digital and the foundation’s archival team will serve as facilitators and curators of insider content and experiences for the 1,918 patrons. Net proceeds from the Nelson Mandela Foundation Digital Patronage sale will go to the foundation.
In addition to the original artwork, the 1,918 Patronage holders are promised ongoing benefits such as Inclusion in an extraordinary, exclusive members cohort and community; gifted digital artworks from the archive; exclusive invitations to curated Nelson Mandela Foundation events, both online and in-person; opportunities to participate in the foundation’s activities and initiatives and; access to a digital members-only portal of curated content.
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Why Nelson Mandela Foundation (NMF) selected Glorious Digital for this project
The Nelson Mandela Foundation (NMF) selected Glorious Digital as a partner because it deploys a less popular blockchain. It is also not as well-established as an NFT marketplace as Opensea or Rarible. Like Glorious Digital, there are other South African companies NMF could have partnered with. However, it chose Glorious Digital for this project.
“Having a track record of successfully and securely selling out multiple digital fine art releases as well as other digital asset projects, and collaborating with international institutions such as Wimbledon, the NMF felt they had found the best partners for this endeavor,” the New Zealand-based NFT marketplace stated.
“The values and creative identity that Glorious prides itself on align with those of the Foundation, and they demonstrated a clear understanding of the precious nature of the legacy that the Foundation has been entrusted with.”
Indeed, Glorious Digital wouldn’t be the first choice anybody would pick. Its platform employs of a less-popular blockchain known as CENNZ. Although it is Ethereum-Virtual-Machine (EVM) compatible, it is not as well established as other EVM-compatible blockchains like Polygon, Fantom, Avalanche, BNB Chain, and Harmony One. Indeed, “Second-layer” scaling systems for Ethereum, like Optimism and Arbitrum, are also better options nowadays.
However, NMF said it worked very closely with Glorious Digital throughout the curation and is quite satisfied with the expertise and service that the pltform offers.
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Queried about why his platform doesn’t employ Ethereum itself, or one of the better-known EVM-compatible chains, Glorious Digital CEO, Tim Harper said CENNZ lets them address shortcomings around honoring royalty payments. He also explained that his team has already selected CENNZ long before Ethereum made the switch from proof-of-work “mining” to proof-of-stake.“
The CENNZNet blockchain is a carbon-neutral Ethereum Side Chain that is optimized for NFTs and metaverse applications,” Harper said. He added that it is fast, carbon negative, and has negligible gas fees.