By Shantelle Dedicke
Greg Fisher is no stranger to the excitement of starting a new project. In 2009, he and his partners founded TripShock!, an online marketplace that allows activity and tour providers to sell their products and services to travelers across several different advertising mediums. Greg understands how to build a successful digital business, and now, he’s joining a new digital community to create the world’s first non-fungible token (NFT) virtual art gallery. MAHI Project is a crypto-backed collection of digital art NFT’s that will be displayed in a virtual public gallery. The project uses its own ERC20 token, MAHI, as a currency, enabling the purchase of NFT’s and governance of its protocol. A group of curators and association managers ensures the sustainability and proper governance of the network. The token can be actively traded on the UNISWAP V2 exchange, which gives anyone the ability to invest and support the project.
The MAHI Project recently opened a call to digital arts and creators specializing in marine wildlife and ocean landscapes with the plan of completing the project’s first curation by Thanksgiving 2021. Interested artists submit their original works of art on the project’s website at mahitoken.org. Chosen artists benefit from a virtual gallery showing, promotion, and exposure across social media and other digital platforms and 50,000 MAHI tokens in exchange for an original, custom piece. Artists may choose to hold tokens as personal investments or sell them after one year. MAHI is serious about marine life protection and ocean conservation, with 10% of the MAHI token supply reserved to support ocean conservation agencies.
When asked to describe the MAHI Project, Greg stated, “We are not creating a corporation, the MAHI project is a community of individuals who care about marine life and ocean conservation, and we believe that art is a unique platform to generate awareness while providing a digital gallery for artists and creators to display their work. We are looking for originality and creativity, and for this first curation.” The project team plans to open the first virtual gallery exhibition with 20 unique works of art from 20 digital creators.
A committee selects submitted works and unique works representing the following categories:
• beauty and majesty of the ocean and/or its marine life
• the impact of rising sea levels and pollution
• people who rely on the ocean for their livelihood
• the efforts of conservationists, scientists, and those fighting to protect the oceans.
Additional scoring criteria include the complexity of digital technology and demonstrated professional quality. The artist’s creations must be original, and art listed on any other NFT marketplace will not be accepted. For more information on the MAHI project and to submit digital works of art for consideration, visit mahitoken.org.
