Six tech-savvy and creative engineering students from Mahindra University, Hyderabad recently launched the Ice Bear Society, which is a rare social-driven NFT initiative targeted toward raising awareness around the ongoing global warming and how the resulting climatic change has emerged as an enormous threat to polar bears within the Arctic.
This philanthropic NFT project is the brainchild of Rahul Arepaka, Rohit Gunnelly, Geha Reddy, Abhinav Challa, Satvik Kondra and Aaryan Sharma. While Challa and Sharma are third year students from CSE branch, the remaining four members of their core team are second year students from CSE, Mechanical and AI branch.
The collection went live on 5th April 2022. Since going live, the project has assembled a robust community by attracting almost 1500 people, hailing from different parts of the world including the United States, the Middle East, India, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, and Canada. The collection features 3333 unique 3D rendered artwork generated by an algorithm based on Ice Bears, with each NFT having its own metadata which includes the unique number along with rarity and attributes of the clothing of the ice bear NFT. The ice bear NFT is available in various collections such as classic, founders, and limited edition.
In line with the core ethos of this project, this entire NFT project is based on Fantom Blockchain, which is one of the world’s most scalable, decentralised and secure block chain ecosystems. The base price for each of these NFTs will be 33 FTM. They have also established a bridge to ensure a smooth transition from other block chain platforms such as polygon, Ethereum etc. by completing the transaction via metamask wallet. 33 per cent of the revenue that’ll be generated during this auction will be directed towards the welfare and protection of Polar Bears through their collaborations with Polar Bear Organizations.
The NFT technology is capable of bringing enormous changes across the globe. As of now, it has majorly been leveraged to make a fortune for a certain few, but we all believe that there’s a higher cause to this technology. The future vision for the Ice Bear Society is to collaborate with more Indian brands and rope in artists, fashion designers, and eminent personalities to further spread the word about climate conservation and how critical it is for our planet and all the axillary species which reside over here.
To further broaden the scope of the Ice Bear Society, the students have collaborated with renowned Telugu film director Tharun Bhascker, Indian stylist Neeraja Kona, numerologist Sheelaa M Bajaj, and model Liudmyla Tkachenko. Additionally, they have also partnered with Hoodoi.com, Umbria Network – DeFi and NFT Garage.