What makes Project Ark special?
Project Ark means to stand out from the crypto crowd and bring something a little different to the table. In a space hyper-focused on immediate returns and yield generation for individual investors and market participants, we aim to broaden the scope of utility made possible by the progressive tools available through cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. At Project Ark, we refer to this approach as “doing good while doing well”. Crypto and NFTs present a unique opportunity to reassess how and what we value while simultaneously creating new value propositions and innovative infrastructure to build on and sustain these new sources of value.
Creating a different result than has been achieved before requires a different or altered process and perspective than has been utilized before. Three things that make Project Ark special are a diversity of location, background, and expertise, a shared passion to combat the climate crisis, and distinct product offerings including our 3D art and impact investment plan.
Diversity of Location, Background, and Expertise
As a team distributed across the globe, Project Ark is able to effectively operate nearly 24 hours a day. Indeed, our Hong Kong-based crew winds down their workday just as the North American contingent comes online and our European outfit hits their midday stride. While geography and time differences still pose some communication and logistical challenges, the modern ability to stay connected allows our world-spanning team to play to our strengths and reach a more diverse audience than we would have were we to base everything around one location or demographic.
Having a decentralized team also affords us a wider perspective to inform our decisions. Everyone living in one place may cut down on some asynchrony, but doesn’t present the same kind of opportunities available to a team with a Project Lead in Berlin and Head of Business Development across the pond in Ottawa.
Project Ark has not only drawn talent from around the world but from a variety of backgrounds and career trajectories. This writer walked away from over 10 years in the music industry to join this team and its mission to fight for environmental protection. Our Artistic Director, Harto, has spent the last several years migrating between Toulouse and Barcelona, working in live theater set design and art direction before diving into the NFT art world. Product Manager Elena spent more than two years as Executive Director of NGO Aspire Romania before joining Project Ark.
Another thing that sets Project Ark apart from a large portion of the actors in the NFT and crypto ecosystems is the fact that our entire team is doxxed, meaning our identities are public knowledge, with details available to anyone interested. This serves to promote public confidence around our project in an environment where fraud is all too common and offenders are rarely held properly accountable. Links to each team member’s LinkedIn profile are available on our company’s website: https://www.project-ark.co/
Though we come from — and live in — various places, the through-line for all of us is a belief in the need to stop the climate crisis in its tracks.
Shared Passion to Combat the Climate Crisis
Our mission is centered around the existential crisis facing our planet known as climate change. Climate change and its devastating effects — not only on human life, but on all life on Earth — inform and drives the decisions we make and the actions we take.
From the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report Summary for Policymakers: “Climate change has caused substantial damages, and increasingly irreversible losses, in terrestrial, freshwater and coastal and open ocean marine ecosystems (high confidence). The extent and magnitude of climate change impacts are larger than estimated in previous assessments (high confidence).”
Each and every team member at Project Ark has internalized this reality and sees it as the danger that it truly is. We recognize that there are many who have not come to terms with this scenario, dismiss it, or believe that there’s either nothing they can do or that it’s unrelated to their life and work at this juncture. Unfortunately, none of those things will stop this not-yet-inevitable catastrophe. Indeed, denial, dismissal, and discounting will only serve to secure its inevitability.
Project Ark doesn’t buy into only meeting sometimes abstract, nearly always inadequate voluntary ESG goals or baseline requirements that let us slap a gold star on our work and call it a day. We’re fighting for tangible change on the ground, and we partner with organizations and projects determined to catalyze said change.
Two ways that we’re engaging the NFT space to draw attention to this calamitous situation are our Arkanauts NFT collection and our investment in environmental impact.
3D Art, The Arkanauts, and Impact Investment
The Arkanauts is a collection of 4,000 NFTs on a mission to create the next generation of re(de)generative community that rewards people in the digital world while creating an impact in the real world. This NFT project is made possible through the talent and vision of our Artistic Director, Harto, and his masterful 3D designs.
Harto has brought depth, vibrance, and whimsy to the Arkanauts design, setting the collection apart from other offerings in the Solana ecosystem. In addition to nine hand-designed traits incorporated into the generative art, there will be 50 unique 1-of-1 Arkanauts. Some are inspired by influential people, including geologist, ocean conservationist, and astronaut Dr. Sian Proctor. Others are collaborations with top-flight artists and projects such as NFT OG Soltan, musician Harrison First, and AI landscape art collective Terra Obscura.
The Arkanauts collection is an opportunity for us to prove our commitment to impact by investing part of our revenue into conservation projects with a mission to clean up our oceans. Ultramarine Ocean Action Summit and Lonely Whale — the Arkanauts’ impact partners — are two established organizations with bold visions to improve ocean health.
Ultramarine is an annual summit sponsored by Sir Richard Branson and spearheaded by artist/activist Jeremy McKane and athlete/ocean defender Susi Mai. Ultramarine Ocean Action Summit’s mission is to recruit and connect leaders and activists from multiple persuasions to develop revolutionary solutions and working groups that take action to revitalize our oceans. Their “30x30” initiative — a commitment to protect 30 percent of Earth’s oceans by 2030 and pledged to protect the natural resources of the British Virgin Islands (BVI) by adopting the Palau Pledge, requires visitors to BVI (and, originally, Palau) to refrain from destroying or exploiting the rich natural resources of the area.
Lonely Whale was founded in 2015 with the express intention of preventing plastic waste from ever entering the ocean. They’ve built a community-led by 2,400 young people around the world and prevented nearly 300 million water bottles from becoming plastic pollution. Lonely Whale sees that a better future starts with cleaning up our planet now.
Project Ark dares to be different. To reclaim the negative narrative around crypto and NFTs and their environmental impact by proving that they can be powerful tools to found regenerative efforts happening in the highest-risk places in the world right now. To create a tangible positive impact on our planet and do good while doing well. To do something special. We hope you’ll join us.
Visit our website and socials to learn more and join us in our climate change crusade:
Arkanauts/Project Ark:
Website: https://project-ark.co/
Arkanauts Website: https://www.arkanauts.io/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WeAreProjectArk
Arkanauts Twitter: https://twitter.com/Arkanauts
Discord : https://discord.gg/KwajnyPu67
