Buy this Grab-inspired NFT artwork

Update: The NFT auction is now live on Foundation.app.

Tech in Asia is full of curious people who love to experiment. That’s why we hacked together this experiment to get our hands dirty in the brave new world of NFTs (or non-fungible tokens, if you’ve never heard of this acronym). There’s so much to learn, and this is what our designer Timmy Loen and the rest of the TIA crew came up with:

Image credit: Timmy Loen

In line with Grab’s monumental IPO, we’ll be releasing this NFT artwork to commemorate this milestone. It’s a slightly tongue-in-cheek visual that encapsulates Grab’s startup journey. It will be up for auction on Foundation.app this Friday, December 3, 5pm Singapore Time.

The winning bidder will be the owner of the NFT artwork and unlock this infographic we did when Grab hit unicorn status. We’ll also add a line to the artwork to credit the winner.

Why we’re doing this

There are several reasons behind this project.

1. We want to quench our curiosity.

We are a digital publication that covers tech. When NFTs appeared on our radar, we naturally got curious about this emerging trend and what it means to our audience. We were also inspired by the NFT experiments of Quartz and The New York Times – hopefully, we can take things to a higher level. Diving into NFTs to prepare for this project gave us a better understanding of this new frontier.

2. We want to make the creation of quality digital art sustainable.

Designing great visuals takes up significant resources, and we know this from experience. We have done quite a few, like this illustration, but we haven’t been able to do it consistently. The subscription model has made quality journalism financially sustainable, so we would love to find out if NFT can do the same for digital art.

3. We want to give back.

After paying for Foundation.app’s fee, the proceeds will be distributed this way: From the first sale proceeds, 80% will go towards purchasing carbon credits from projects focused on fighting climate change. This is also part of our efforts to offset our legacy carbon emission. We’ll be partnering with Cool Effect and contributing to these projects:

• For Peat’s Sake (Indonesia)
• Cooking With Gas (China)
• Doo Doo Does More (India)

The remaining 20% will be allotted for costs that made this NFT experiment possible, including design, manpower, gas fees, etc.

Happy bidding!

Want to be the first to know about our next NFT artwork? Drop your email in the form below.