Cardano NFT: Earth Natives – The Cryptonomist

This week’s guest on the Cardano NFT Column is a project characterized by an NFT collection raising awareness & sharing knowledge about sustainable construction using EARTH as a building material: Earth Natives.

Last week’s guest was a project developing an NFT-based RPG with competitive game modes.

This initiative is a point of reference for NFTs on Cardano and every week or two we will invite someone to answer some questions and give us an update directly from within the Cardano community.

Considering that many of our readers are new to the crypto space, we will have a mix of simple and technical questions.

Cardano NFT project: Earth Natives

Hey, glad to have you here. Please introduce your team, where are you from, what are your backgrounds?

Hi, thank you so much for inviting us to speak here and share a little bit about who we are.

So our team is made up of 6 core members split between Australia and Brazil who have been either friends, family or coworkers for a long time. 

Thiago and I, Kristy, are married and are the co-founders of Earth Natives. I have a background in communications and lead the front with all community sides of things for the project including social media and copywriting. Thiago is our project manager and also the CEO of Institute Ecoterm Modular. 

We have our incredible artist, Montanaro, who is a well known illustrator in Brazil and has been drawing professionally from a very young age. Our art director, Rafael, who works for one of the top advertising agencies in Sao Paulo and has been best friends with Thiago since childhood. Our developer Keith, who we met at the Perth Cardano Summit and who is also the stake pool operator for POWER stake pool. And lastly, Kati, who is a civil engineer and owner of Metta, one of the ecological brick factories that is a part of our Institute. Kati is also the team leader for building the sustainable house that we donated.

Why have you chosen Cardano for your NFT collection? What advantages does this blockchain bring?

We were looking for sustainable blockchains and narrowed it down to Algorand and Cardano, however in the end chose Cardano because of its robust technology and its culture that is dedicated to making a positive change in the world. We have always been supporters of Cardano and want to play a role in its mission to make the world a better place.  

In terms of advantages, the blockchain provides us with a way to operate internationally with transparency and resiliency. 

Tell us more about the Earth Natives project. How did it begin, what have you achieved and where are you going?

Behind the scenes of Earth Natives is Institute Ecoterm Modular, an institution that is dedicated to teaching others how to build with earth and raising awareness for a more sustainable future. As a means to help scale and start operating internationally we started looking for a technology that we could use to help showcase the interlocking compressed earth bricks which is where Cardano came in and the idea for Earth Natives was born.

Earth Natives is an NFT project that used the funds from our sales to build a sustainable home. We then donated this house to a family in need in Brazil and filmed the entire journey to share with the community. 

The lore behind the NFTs is based on climate change and how with growing temperatures humans were forced underground and morphed with an animal that uses the earth for shelter. This is where we get the three main characters from our collection of 3333 NFTs. The most important aspect about the artwork of the NFTs is the mineral each one carries on their chest. It is through the minerals that we wanted to teach about the complexities of the earth which is seen in the metadata. Each collection also comes with its own ceremonial ayahuasca music as a reminder to all to take the moment in the day to focus on yourself, breath and be in harmony with the earth. 

As of 3 weeks ago, we officially handed over the keys to the completed house and since then have been working on:

• Our mission driven stake pool, TERRA, which recently minted its first block;
• IEM Governance tokens; 
• Our illustrated lore with audio narration; 
• We also have plans to create a 3D Earth Building museum in order to display the different types of techniques that use earth as a building material in a virtual experience

In the long term, we hope to be able to teach small communities around the world how to produce the bricks themselves so that they can then provide jobs and housing for their locals as well as help us to make the future more sustainable.

Can you explain the process of building one of your ecological houses? From the materials used to the advantages of the interlocking of bricks.

When it comes to building one of our ecological houses, the only process that is different from a standard build, is how we build the walls and install utilities. In terms of materials, we use the compressed earth interlocking and modular bricks, glue and steel rods.  

Soil-cement bricks (compressed earth interlocking bricks) represent an alternative fully in line with sustainable development guidelines. They require low energy consumption in the extraction of raw materials, they do not generate any type of pollution or waste in their production process, and they dispense with the need for burning which generates great energy savings and also minimizes deforestation as 6 to 9 trees per thousand bricks are preserved.

The bricks themselves provide higher quality and comfort to the house as they are a lot stronger than your average brick and due to their holes which form thermoacoustic chambers, they are able to control the temperature inside the building and also help isolate noise.

Moreover, in the execution of the work, the need to cut the walls for electrical and hydraulic passages is eliminated, which generates a substantial decrease in the volume of debris generated and still reduces the consumption of settlement and levelling mortars.

In a more simplistic explanation, the compressed earth interlocking bricks are ecological, low energy consuming, waste reducing, super-efficient to build with and lessen construction time by up to 30%, require fewer materials and labour, therefore reducing the overall cost of the build and provide better comfort and style to your home. 

Awesome. Any closing remarks? Where can people follow you?

Earth Natives is just one project from Institute Ecoterm Modular and we still have so much more we want to achieve and accomplish in the future. For anyone who is interested in learning more about us or has any questions please head to our website and EcoTerm. You can also find us on Twitter which has the link to our Discord. 

Big thank you to Patryk and the Cardano NFT Column for giving us a slot to talk about our project and for all the amazing content you share with us all.

Disclaimer: The opinions and views of the people interviewed are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Cardano Foundation or IOG. Moreover, this content is for educational purposes, it doesn’t constitute financial advice.