For Good: Octotokes

A father and son team are tackling ocean conservancy

Disclaimer: I am an investor in Octotokes. DYOR.

Octopuses of the open ocean rise up!

Living in Florida, I have access to some of the world’s most beautiful beaches within just a few hours’ drive of my house. I love going out and snorkeling in the Atlantic Ocean, taking in the majesty and splendor of a vibrant world found just a few feet under the water. Even while I’m out swimming for fun, I always keep a sharp-eye out for trash underwater and collect what I can; beach cleanups are something I find to be very fulfilling and I do them as often as I can, primarily focusing on beaches found in my county.

Given this proximity to beaches and the ocean, it should be no surprise to readers that I frequently feature projects that focus on ocean cleanup and conservation. So while I was late night scrolling through Twitter looking for #NFTsforGood projects, I quite literally stumbled across Octotokes (twitter, discord, website), a Polygon-based project, and immediately purchased one of these cute little Octopuses from OpenSea. The Octotokes project is certainly unique in the NFT world, as it’s currently run by a doxxed father and son team. Normally, I have to poke around Twitter and Discord to get a better idea of what a project is doing but luckily, the Octotokes team has already published this information up-front, something more projects should do.

Tackling trash together

The Octotokes team have committed to donating 20% of public minting revenue, along with 3% of all secondary sales, to #teamseas and to date they have donated $145USD! Currently, there are two collections available, the OG Octotokes and the Octotokes Reef, the latter of which is presently being listed in batches of 100 NFTs on OpenSea and each batch frequently sells out!

I wanted to understand more about the project, its aims, and future plans so I sat down with @nftskipper, the project’s co-founder, to find out more about these quirky cephalopods.

tehbizz: What was the inspiration behind Octotokes? Why did you choose an octopus for the project?

Skipper: The inspiration began when we started to think of ways we could use NFTs to help affect the physical world and help with the devastating ocean pollution as a whole. It was very overwhelming at first, but we began to think smaller and how we could make a difference ourselves. The Community that we have created and are still creating started from nothing, and together we are making a difference! We chose an Octopus for our project because they are a token of what we are fighting to save along with #TeamSeas and they fit the overall theme of our project.

tehbizz: Early on, the team decided to dox themselves, was this move tantamount to help establish trust within your burgeoning community?

Skipper: Yes, especially with all of the scams and cash grabs in the NFT space, we wanted our Community to know that we are in this for the long run! We felt it was extremely necessary to dox ourselves.

tehbizz: According to your site, the team is working on ways to make more sustaining donations to #teamseas, what incentives have you come up with in this area?

Skipper: We just recently launched our second Octotokes collection in the first week of February, titled "Octotokes Reef". We felt that it was important to have perfect artwork for a project to be sustainable, so all of our layers were completely redrawn by hand. This is our first major step in our project becoming a sustainable foundation. Every month we will be making a donation to #TeamSeas, and plan to donate more & more as we go on.

tehbizz: Will Octotokes work with different ocean conservation projects in the future, or do you believe you will continue to support #teamseas exclusively?

Skipper: We have looked into a few different ocean conservation projects. Right now we plan on exclusively donating to #TeamSeas who is also in cooperation with the charity Ocean Conservancy.

tehbizz: Finally, what plans does the team have for their Metaverse parcel when it is purchased? This is a new utility that many projects are adding into their roadmaps, but few have executed on it yet.

Skipper: So I cannot speak too much about our plans for the metaverse just because we haven't finalized anything. I will say that this is something we have been talking about and we plan to approach the Octotokes metaverse utility like no one has done before! This is something that will begin to happen once we reach 100% ownership of Octotokes Reef.

Metaverse, ahoy!

Currently, the Octotokes team is working on ways to make their donations to #teamseas on a more sustainable and regular basis, which is one reason releasing in batches of 100 makes sense. They are also working towards acquiring a parcel of land in the Metaverse, so that Octotokes NFT holders can have a virtual interaction space. Additionally, their published roadmap shows they are currently working on a profit-sharing framework for holders, which is becoming an increasingly important utility of NFTs.

The Octotokes NFT project is currently minting on OpenSea and at time of publishing, the floor price is 0.005ETH (Polygon wrapped) although with each batch of 100 NFTs listed, the floor price increases so it may be higher than what I have published. They have a very active Discord, including a #teamseas channel where all donation information is shared with community members. Drop by, say hi, tell them Tehbizz sent you and if you like what you see, buy an NFT!