These NFTs Have Ecological Use Cases, But What About Taste?

The Sirens NFTs is a female-led project by the famous influencer Alexis Ren that highlights an important fact: “On average, about 5% of NFT sales make up women.” And they want to change that.

Disclaimer: The following op-ed represents the views of the author, and may not necessarily reflect the views of Bitcoinist. Bitcoinist is an advocate of creative and financial freedom alike.

Ren is an internet celebrity who has long advocated for mental wellness, women empowerment, and the environment. Her previous involvement with Web3 has already been well-entangled with these topics.

As per Forbes, Ren co-created the tech platform STAGE where she hosts the female community We Are Warriors (WAW), which focuses on “online fitness & mental wellbeing.” The platform offers courses and events mostly related to at-home workouts.

Similarly, the NFT project Sirens, built on Solana, takes this idea to a bigger scale. This time, Ren aims for NFTs with eco-friendly, real-life use cases.

The members of the NFT community will have access to the NFT gated STAGE platform and “have access to a private calendar of events with monthly yoga classes, breathwork classes, meditations and other healing modalities.”

The community will also give access to “crypto 101 courses that demystify and breakdown the space through tutorials, videos, and trainings on the fundamentals of web3 technology.”

Sirens also aims to build an eco-friendly village for all members.

Eco-friendly and NFTs are not two topics that go along so well nowadays. Especially among environmentalists. However, the Sirens team wants to build a wellness retreat in Texas with 100% sustainable homes for the community “using local materials and built with the focus of being off the grid.”

This is an interesting approach that shows how NFT creators are waking up to the need for real-life cases where holders can justify the purchase of a non-fungible token with an exclusive experience.

NFTs, or a least a sector of the market, could be evolving into a sort of membership pass. Maybe the titanic idea we now have of the metaverse could reshape itself trying to find balance with real-life experiences.

NFTs And Women-Empowerment Check

The money generated by the minting of the Sirens NFTs is supposed to get invested into businesses that will be proposed and elected by community members. Then, the leaders claim they will guide the members by providing resources to help them “make businesses successful in addition to just a money investment.”

This all seems innovative and even exciting. One can only hope that female-led projects find a way to disrupt the current male-led dominant models, opening doors for more women to dream big, support each other in business projects, and succeed. That sounds great, but…

There are a couple of things about Sirens that do not meet my personal expectations.

When looking into the We Are Warriors offered courses and the Sirens NFTs I could not help but notice that this does not seem to be that kind of ‘love-yourself/wellness’ community where you will find any trace of the body-positivity movement that public figures like Lizzo lead.

Meaning: 1. there is not much diversity in the women portrayed in these videos and NFTs; 2. even though they include meditation as part of their mental-health focus, their wellness goal seems to be very ‘traditionally fit’. Not a community for all sizes.

This made me wonder: what is the current dominant image of the popular crypto-woman? Your Twitter Time Line will likely answer that question with ease.

If you are selling me female empowerment, then I expect ALL females can find empowerment, a chance, and a place to succeed within your movement. And I also expect mental health to be about so much more than looking like we go to the gym.

I’m not implying that Sirens or WAW means to be discriminatory, but it is important to wonder if there are enough opportunities for the women who do not look anything like your typical social media influencer.

Related Reading | Instagram To Begin Testing NFTs This Week

Web3 Aesthetics

I also have an aesthetic concern.

Some NFT projects seem to have great goals and might have a positive impact in large communities, so why, dear NFT designers, do many of these digital creations tend to be so corny, sometimes creepy, and even lazy-looking?

Maybe they’re thinking “It will still sell.”

The general NFTs collector or holder worries more about the future of their investment or the roadmap of the project than what it looks like. We have all seen poorly designed NFT pieces reach a millionaire floor in a matter of days.

But let’s think deeply for a second. This is most likely the largest image-related movement of our time. By the numbers, probably of history. NFTs have become a financial tool, a historic resource, and some even dare to call it art. But when did people lose their hunger to own something of beauty and will we ever wake up again desiring nothing less than to catch a glance of Helen of Troy and the Venus de Milo?

Related Reading | GameStop Pushes Start On New Ethereum NFT Wallet