Cardano NFT: TURF – The Cryptonomist

This week’s guest on the Cardano NFT Column is a project that algorithmically generates artistic interpretations of your favorite places: TURF.

Last week’s guest was a manga/anime project that aims to be a world-leading multimedia and entertainment company.

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: TURF

Greetings, glad to have you here. Tell us something about your team, where are you based and what are your backgrounds?

Thanks for having us! We’re a 2-man team based out of The Netherlands: Garm and Ralph. We met while working for a tech startup and reconnected discussing art, cartography and NFTs one day.

Garm was involved in creating OG NFT project CardanoSpace and contributes to a variety of crypto projects. Ralph creates cartographic art and is a software developer by day. 

Besides Garm & Ralph there are some amazing Turf community members that help out with managing the Discord server and creating assets for use on Twitter and other social media – we wouldn’t be here without them!

So what is TURF and what prompted you to choose the Cardano blockchain as home for your project?

Turf creates cartographic NFTs / wall art. 

Turf is interactive cartographic art. We generate gorgeous 1/1 NFTs based on the map of the entire planet, which you can interact with in a 3D environment and frame as beautiful 4K physical artworks.

In our Google Maps-like interface you can select exactly which 2km squares you want to own yourself. Once bought, no one else can get a Turf of that piece of earth anymore.

That means there’s only 1 NFT with the Eiffel Tower on it, 1 NFT of where you met your spouse, and just 1 NFT with your home on it – if you buy it you’re the only one who can claim ownership of your neighborhood. Your turf.

Turf NFTs also come with a reproduction license, we’re working on allowing collectors to merge adjacent Turfs and are launching a Turf printing service later this year. If you can’t wait that long to get a print of your Turf, we ship a print of each 3×3 Turf to the buyer’s home.

As for why Cardano – it’s the only natural choice for an earth minded project like Turf! As Turf is a celebration of the beauty of our planet that means we don’t want to negatively impact the environment with the blockchain we utilize. 

The fact that Cardano is based on Proof of Stake vs. Proof of Work, and therefore many times more energy efficient, was a key factor in choosing our blockchain. Second, we read some of the scientific background on Cardano and this paper comparing Proof of Stake based protocols after which we came to the conclusion that Cardano’s Ouroboros makes all the right decisions in balancing scalability, block finality and security. 

Can you expand on the relationship between NFTs in the digital world with the corresponding physical object? What possibilities arise?

First and foremost we think that Turf’s cartographic art looks amazing on a wall. To encourage this we ship a physical print of each 3×3 Turf to the buyer’s home. We’re about to send out 30 of these in the upcoming week. Pictures speak louder than words so here’s a preview of what a Turf print of one of Ralph’s favorite cities looks like:

But this is only the beginning. We’re working on a merging feature that lets you combine adjacent Turfs to create ever bigger Turf art which could span the entirety of Ralph’s wall. We’ve seen someone experiment with a 3D map of their Turf and someone is waiting on a 3D printed version of their Turf to arrive – there are so many creative ways to turn Turfs into gorgeous physical objects and we can’t wait to see how they all turn out!

What can you tell us about the future of your project? What are you working on and where would you like to see TURF in the years to come?

So each Turf NFT comes with a reproduction license. Owners of Turf NFTs are allowed to create and sell prints of the Turfs they own. In fact, we encourage it! We intend to offer a printing service for Turf holders. If a Turf owner desires, we can sell prints of their Turf to the general public for them – the owner would then receive a % of the proceeds of every sale.

The Turf landscape will be fragmented at first. Over time, we expect people will collect many adjacent Turf squares to completely own the city they live in – or at least the entirety of Manhattan. You’ll be able to burn adjacent Turfs to get one big merged Turf that contains one big artwork combining all of your Turf NFTs.

We’re currently working on both the merging feature and printing service and are releasing them as quickly as we can.

Finally, we are aiming to attract a large mainstream audience, something which we think is doable given the broad appeal of the Turf concept. There are many early adopters out there that are interested in the concept of NFTs, but are put off by the idea of buying a profile picture of a bored ape. They may be interested in getting an NFT that they can hang though, especially when the NFT depicts their hometown.

Thank you kindly for your time. Any closing remarks? Where can people stay in touch?

Thank you for having us! Please check out our unique Google Maps-like minting interface on mint.turfnft.com if you haven’t already to see if places that mean a lot to you are still available.

In case you come across a blocked city – these are becoming available soon. Learn more here.

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.