Although I’ve been setting the foundations for my own Non-Fungible Token (NFT) project for a few months, I had yet to take the plunge and purchase my first NFTs. As I discuss here, I was looking for a vibrant community, somewhere I could connect with others interested in learning more about blockchain and the Web3 space, particularly with an eye to working on new applications and projects. As for price, I was hoping to find a project with room to grow, something with good early signals but not currently valued as much as a good used car (or airplane). And lastly, I confess I am aesthetically sensitive. Power to the projects with blood-soaked-fanged creatures and melting faces, but I wasn’t looking for this kind of profile picture (PFP). After all, in addition to the community benefits, I’d been advised by a GenZ-er that using an actual avatar of yourself is so 2020. I wanted to find something I could use for this purpose too.
After my DYOR activities (Do Your Own Research) I am pleased to say that I found 3 projects that I’m really excited to try! Below is an intro to the projects, including why I’m psyched to join their communities and enjoy the utility that they plan to provide. All of them have beautiful, artistic NFT collections that happen to celebrate women in different ways.
Tuttle Tribe
The Tuttle Tribe is named for Julia Tuttle, the founder of Miami and the only female to have this role in recorded history for a US City! The NFT provides access to Web3 Equity’s educational community, including free IRL (In Real Life) and virtual learning, discounts to conferences, coding bootcamps, academies and more. As of this writing, this community is still minting, and you can go to their website to connect your wallet or even pay with a credit card. To get mine, I went to their Open Sea Collection to choose. Note that when you mint an NFT, you frequently don’t know before purchasing exactly what your NFT will look like. Their collection offers female avatars like the beauty above or luscious lips with various catch phrases (I later bought an additional ‘How can I help?’ mouth in honor of the famous tweet by Miami’s Mayor Suarez).
Since I live in the Magic City, I thought this would be a great community for me to join to meet other local woman (and their men frens 😉) who are interesting in developing new blockchain projects in the area. I don’t think you have to live here, though, to benefit from the connections and training provided through the project. I can’t wait for their next IRL event. And if you don’t live here, what a great excuse to visit Miami! LMK 😉
The Flower Girls
The Flower Girls NFT project minted in December 2021 and quickly sold out, so the only way to purchase one currently is on their Open Sea Collection. The gorgeous collection is developed by artist Varvara Alay who uses fantasy and color to produce beautiful and engaging pieces. In March 2022 The Flower Girls announced a partnership with Dolphin Entertainment to produce media inspired by the brand, and its holders include those well-known in the entertainment and NFT space, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Eva Longoria, and Gary Vaynerchuk.
Participation in the community is an engrossing experience, where the developers have introduced some intriguing fantasy-type structures to promote some smart Tokenomics. For example, they are using the concept of ‘seeding’ and ‘cross-pollination,’ consistent with the garden theme, to creatively promote the concept of holding and staking the NFTs, as well as encouraging loyalty to the project by offering a stake in the next round. Brilliant idea.
If you are also looking for a philanthropic project, Flower Girls is donating 20% of its profits to children’s charities. The collection is also donating another 5% of profits toward supporting NFT collections created or designed by children.
I chose this project because it ticked all the boxes for me: thriving community, beautiful art and a surprisingly affordable price compared to some similar communities. They’ve also just announced an IRL event to coincide with NFT.NYC, the biggest and baddest NFT event going these days. I’m thinking of making the trip!
Women Rise
Women Rise features the beautiful work of young artist Maliha Abidi and features women from around the world as activists, artists, scientists, coders and more. If you get excited by empowerment for women, you are going to love this project. The mint for the project is also sold out, but you can find them here. I was able to buy in near the floor to this reasonably-priced project, despite all of its press coverage and promise. Very quickly I had direct interaction with the team, as their Discord server bot banned me as a suspicious account 😂 Their Discord manager Abbey got back to me super quick and resolved the issue immediately. Thanks Abbey ❤️
The team is in the middle of announcing some new partnerships and projects, many of which I expect will continue the promotion of women in science and the arts. For example, they just announced a collaboration with Voice HQ for NFT-artist residencies. Check the link for more info. Basically women make up 16% of the NFT art market and 5% of NFT sales. Watch out, because, you know, Women Rise! 🤗
Well, peeps, that concludes my intro to these fascinating projects. Stay tuned for more on my experiences with these and other amazing, trail-blazing NFT projects.
