The Flagstaff Dark Skies Coalition has entered the non-fungible token (NFT) market with an original NFT collection entitled “A Night in Flagstaff.” Featuring night sky scenes from Buffalo Park, the collection has been described as “70 images for $700 each from 7,000 feet.” The sale of NFTs from this collection launched on April 21 and proceeds will support the northern Arizona Eyes on Night Skies (EONS) research program.
NFTs are digital assets that employ blockchain technology to certify unique ownership of the asset. Essentially an art market, the NFT market hit $44 billion in 2021. According to the Flagstaff Dark Skies Coalition (FDSC), this collection makes Flagstaff “the first and only destination in the country to enter the NFT market.”
The NFTs within “A Night in Flagstaff” are digital images. Each is a 20-second exposure of the night sky as seen from Buffalo Park and show stars and dark skies less than two miles from city hall. The images were taken by FDSC President Chris Luginbuhl.
“We wanted to create a collection of images which conveyed our message that Flagstaff has a unique resource and a uniquely successful record in protecting that resource,” Luginbuhl said.
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In 2001, Flagstaff was designated as the first International Dark Sky City, and recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of that designation. The city remains a global example of dark sky conservation, Luginbuhl said, and these images, “embody the message that Flagstaff has a proof of concept and that dark skies are protectable.”
The idea for an NFT fundraiser came about through collaboration with Discover Flagstaff, said FDSC executive director Bonnie Stevens. “Trace Ward had the idea and introduced the notion of NFT’s to FDSC as a new marketing tool,” Stevens said. FDSC also sought guidance from Blake Rayfield, professor in Northern Arizona University’s W.A. Franke College of Business.
“A Night in Flagstaff” makes FDSC “one of the first” nonprofits to ever enter the NFT market, Rayfield said. As a fundraising tool, Rayfield explained that the sale of NFTs has some distinct advantages. The overhead cost of creating an NFT is much less compared to fundraising tactics like planning an event or dedicating a building. This creates a lower entry cost for would be philanthropists.
“If you want your name on a building, its millions of dollars,” Rayfield said. “With NFTs, it’s possible that nonprofits do fundraising, but the people who donate funds get some kind of recognition in return.” Rayfield explained that the nature of blockchain technology means that those who purchase from “A Night in Flagstaff” will have their name associated with the collection in perpetuity.
As a fundraiser, its “brilliant,” said Rich Naden, the first to purchase an NFT from “A Night in Flagstaff.”
“For people like myself, that are always hungry for a new experience and an adventure, it got to me,” Naden said. “It’s kind of nice to be bleeding edge on this sort of thing.” He also said the purchase of an NFT is something of an investment in cryptocurrency, though not a very “serious” one.
“Honestly, this really is a donation,” he said. “But at the same time, I think it’s good that we diversify all our holdings, whether that turns out to be of investment quality. I’m just happy to be able to support a great cause and diversify at the same time.”
Naden purchased an NFT that depicts “the Milky Way and all of its glory,” with the streak of an airplane and a blinking satellite at the fringes.
“It captures the night sky, a little bit of humanity, and a little bit of a little bit of outer space,” Naden said. He plans on enlarging, printing the image, and hanging it in his office. “I thought it was all very cool and I’m happy to own it.” As of press time, three of the 70 NFTs from the collection have been sold.
The funds raised from the sale of “A Night in Flagstaff” are destined to support the EONS research, which involves “continuous readings of the night sky,” said researcher Ed Anderson. The research team has already established several monitoring units around town, and date from these units will help scientists understand light pollution and refine Flagstaff’s dark sky preservation policies.
The next step for EONS is to install a monitoring station at Babbitt Ranches. This ranch land is already “one of the darkest places in the state,” Stevens said. “It’s nestled among dark sky places like the city of Flagstaff, Grand Canyon National Park, Wupatki National Monument.” It’s hoped that this research will be instrumental in designating Babbitt Ranches as a dark sky preserve.
Their interest in dark sky preservation in many ways makes FDSC a conservation organization aimed at protecting and conserving a natural resource. NFTs, and the cryptocurrency they are traded with, don’t perfectly align with this mission. Recently, cryptocurrency trade has come under scrutiny for being extremely energy intensive. It all has to do with the amount of computing power needed to maintain the blockchain technology that cryptocurrency and NFTs are built on. In 2021, The New York Times reported that “the process of creating Bitcoin [a popular cryptocurrency] to spend or trade consumes around 91 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, more than is used by Finland, a nation of about 5.5 million.”
When the energy-intensive nature of cryptocurrency trading came in front of the FDSC board, “we wanted to make sure that that proceeding forward was compatible with the environmental mission of our organization,” Luginbuhl said. But not all cryptocurrency trade is made equal. Through consultation with Rayfield, the group identified a platform of trade known as Polygon that trades Ethereum cryptocurrency in a less energy intensive way.
“We felt comfortable that we were responsible to our overall environmental mission by moving forward with that particular constraint,” Luginbuhl said.
Those interested in purchasing an NFT from the “A Night in Flagstaff” collection may do so by creating an OpenSea account.
