A press release on Yahoo Finance dated 24th of October 2021 from the Pirates of Solana mentioned their intention to mint and sell 7,777 unique Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) on the Solana blockchain and donate $50,000 to The Reef-World Foundation after the sale ended. Reef-World were not contacted prior to this statement nor did the charity receive any donation from Pirates of Solana. Reef-World’s position is that minting NFTs to fund environmental work is incompatible until the issue of environmental damage from energy use and electronic waste is addressed.
Reef-World accepts financial donations that are consistent with its mission and that support its core programmes and projects. Reef-World will generally accept donations and other forms of support from individuals, partnerships, corporations, foundations, government agencies, or other entities as long as the funds donated have not been sourced through operations and activities deemed detrimental to the communities we serve and the environment.
Innovation is one of Reef-World’s core values and we are not afraid to break from the norm and use innovative approaches to achieve conservation impact. However, any new approach must still fall inline with our mission to protect coral reefs and related ecosystems. Coral reefs are globally under threat primarily from the negative effects from climate change; energy use from fossil fuels is a primary contributor to this. Even if the most ambitious global temperature target of the Paris Agreement is met (limiting warming to 1.5°C), reefs are still projected to decline by 70-90%.
We see huge potential in blockchain technology to increase transparency, solve real conservation problems and generate a sustainable source of income to fund environmental charitable work, but only where the energy used can be proven to either be extremely low or from renewable sources. We are still learning and doing our due diligence on the ethics of accepting donations and payments in cryptocurrencies — both environmental and political.