What is an NFT?

Crypto, wallet, NFT, blockchain… Everyone is talking about all those terms, but do they actually understand their true meaning? If you are one of them, don’t worry! Like any new technology, understanding NFTs and everything that’s happening in the space can be challenging.

NFTs are digital assets on the blockchain that represent real-world objects like art, music, in-game items, videos, avatars, and many more. They allow individuals to create, buy and sell items in an easily verifiable way using blockchain technology. But be careful when you buy an NFT, you are not buying the copyright, intellectual property, or commercial rights to any underlying assets.

Although they have been around since 2014, NFTs are now gaining popularity as they become an increasingly popular way to buy and sell digital art. The market for NFTs was worth a whopping $41 billion in 2021, an amount approaching the total value of the entire global fine art market.

#NFGrapevine - first web3 wine brand

You are probably asking yourself what does Blank team has to do with the wine industry. A lot, we would say! #NFGrapevine is one of our latest and most challenging projects, designed and executed in collaboration with a team of entrepreneurs, tech enthusiasts, wine, fashion, and art lovers.

It all started on one rooftop in Zurich where Vikram Bhatnagar, a digital leader and blockchain enthusiast, was hanging out with his best friend and came up with a crazy idea to buy a vineyard in Switzerland. His original idea was to buy a field with Heida - known as a pearl of alpine wines - and stick IoT sensors to learn about wine and combine it with next-gen technology. It was all very simple - once you drink your bottle you should know all about the exclusive handmade wine from the beautiful Swiss Alps and how Blockchain NFTs and IoT interconnect and create new data-driven business models. A slightly different wine-tasting experience than you've ever heard!

Sometimes even crazy dreams come true so Vikram found and bought a parcel in the Swiss Alps with the help of Michael Hock - a master winemaker from the Valais region. Soon after they installed numerous and various types of IoT sensors to measure rain, solar radiation, leaf wetness, soil moisture, and control water. And the rest is history!

Vikram imagined this innovative concept as a wine-tasting experience and owning an NFT at the same time! Prime Render Studio was in charge of designing a unique NFT collection that represents a single or a bundle of grapevines that exist not only digitally but also physically in the real world. It contains 300 unique NFTs and they are already sold out! The token yields a bottle of wine made from the grapes of the token holder’s real-world grapevine.

For a period of three year, owners have a right to receive one bottle of wine per year, depending on the season, sun, and filling. Every bottle has a unique digital printed label which can be read by the NFC tag within the glass and documentation of its growth and manufacturing process.

This documentation includes data collected using the Helium Network via LoRaWAN®-enabled sensors from Decentlab (live data: weather station, leaf humidity, and soil moisture), Stega (water valve), and ingested into Streamr decentralized real-time data network. In the future the vineyard will also exist as a virtual reality feature; each owner will be able to walk through the vineyard and see their own grapevines.

Over the next three years, they will be producing and minting 900 bottles, each with its unique artwork. The first wine will be ready between the end of December 2022 and early February 2023.

Building the creative solution

At the same time, another part of the project was in the hands of Benja Begovic and Colin Studiger from DigitalMinds.swiss and Blank team. We set up a web page that represented the project and enabled the sale of the NFT collection to investors. The website and NFT collection were to embody Swiss ideals while still being devenish. After several design revisions, the final product is available on nfg.wine.

The collection is imagined as a mix of serious traits such as the Visperterminen flag and Metaverse traits - moon and unicorn emblems. This combination perfectly illustrates NGF’s goal of connecting the digital NFT world with the actual grapevine. After the art team designed all the layers, we generated every NFT with its metadata.

The most important technical thing in every NFT collection is definitely a smart contract so we used optimized and secure ERC721 smart contracts to ensure our clients and their users have the best possible mint experience. The collection is already sold out OTC so we airdropped every single NFT to its new owner.

Conclusion

#NFGrapevine goes far beyond digital artwork and we have some ambitious plans for the future! The true goal is to build a community through virtual and in-person events, education, and activities that gather individuals and organizations who appreciate art, wine, entrepreneurship, and innovation. There is also a charity side of the project, 15% of total revenue goes into the WineBank wallet for good causes. Stay tuned for more! 🙌

The collection contract is verified and can be inspected on Polyscan.

The NFG collection is available on Opensea.