Animals Red List (ARL) is a collection of 13,333 unique NFTs created in a non-generative way. Each NFT depicts an endangered animal from the International Red Data Book. The project's mission is to draw attention to the problem of endangered animals through art and technology.

ARL NFT Collection on the Disintar Marketplace

ARL was launched on January 30, 2022 and was the first TON-based NFT project to be integrated with Telegram channels via a paid subscription service. Sales of the collection on the primary market alone exceeded $2M. Thus, ARL became the first truly mass NFT collection in TON ecosystem.

Preparing for launch

How much did it cost to draw 13,333 NFTs?

The entire collection was hand-drawn, digital style. About 300 illustrators worked on the task and were carefully selected. ~176,000 USD were spent on creating the images. At this link you can see a visualization of the results of this work.

Promotion of the collection

The team spent ~352,000 USD on advertising in Telegram before the mint. RedCompany brought in the most users. After the mint, support for the project did not stop, but on the contrary, gained new momentum. In June 2022, a broadcast with zoological scientist Viktor Bardashev took place, the event was covered by major media outlets including Crypto News, Metro Moscow, Media CoinsPaid, Techkult and others.

Street art on a building facade in Tel Aviv

«Animals are non-fungible too»

In the summer of 2022, the founders of ARL held a contest — participants had to come up with a phrase that best reflects the essence of the project and draws attention to its issues.

Participants submitted ~600 proposals. The best was the slogan «Animals are non-fungible too». The winner of the contest received an award of 500 $TON, the phrase was turned into street art, placing it on the facade of a building in the center of Tel Aviv. The author of this graffiti is Sergei Ovseikin, founder of the Zukclub community and author of the «Welcome to Krasnodar Krai» billboard in Sri Lanka.

Collection Launch

All items were originally divided into categories of rarity (literally):

Tier 1 — dying breed
Tier 2 — endangered
Tier 3 — in danger

Each Tier is in turn divided into sublevels:

legendary
epic
mythical
rare
common

The first marketplace on which the Animals Red List collection appeared was Disintar. ARL later appeared on Getgems as well.

On the NFT presale, Tier 3 could be mined for 7 $TON. In the first days after the launch of the collection, prices for Tier 3 reached up to 100 $TON for NFT and more.

Types of rarity in the ARL collection

NFT Tier 2 NFTs were originally priced in the tens of $TONs and Tier 1s in the hundreds of $TONs. On the secondary market, the value of the rarest and most beautiful NFTs at the peak of their popularity exceeded $2,000 $TON. As of this writing (July 2024) the flor of the collection is around $2 $TON.

Project Economics

Charity

A distinctive feature of the collection from the beginning was its charitable emphasis.

The creators of the project regularly transferred a portion of the proceeds to the International Fund for Nature Conservation IUCN, affiliated with the International Red Data Book.

The first charitable payment from ARL funders to IUCN was on March 2, 2022.The total donation was $1,582.

Confirmation of ARL founders' transfer of funds to the Conservation Fund

At least 4 donations totaling over $8,000 were sent to their intended destinations.

Donations distribution in the ARL project

Monetization for NFT Holders

The project was funded through a network of Telegram channels and the @donate bot, which accepts payments in $TON to transfer a portion of the donation to the IUCN International Conservation Fund.

NFT holders, in addition to the right to unique artwork, received dividends: each donator provided NFT holders with their share of the profits.

Within a few months, ARL holders received passive income into their TON wallets. The amount of remuneration depended on the NFT's Tier, donation assignment, and other factors.

Collection Update

One of the ideas of the founders of the collection was to allow NFTs to change their Tier depending on changes in the International Red Data Book, which is updated semi-annually (in July and December).

That is, if the animal's population changes, the collection's metadata is also updated, and new paws and medals appear on the image of the NFT that changed rarity.

In the summer of 2022, 175 NFTs in the ARL collection changed their status after the official Red List rotation. Holders saw new categories, Tier 0 (black medal on NFTs) and Tier 4 (white medal on NFTs). Tier 0 are animals that have been recognized as extinct. Species that moved to Tier 4 have recovered populations.

Interestingly, the history of changes for each animal is also kept by the NFT.

Project Founders

Offline event for ARL collection holders with participation of Sergey Romanov

ARL Collection was created by two businessmen: Sergey Romanov and Andrey Chunin. Previously, they were mainly engaged in classic types of business: managing and developing a chain of coffee shops in Turkey and development, as well as the jewelry brand Made in Cosmos, which in 2021 achieved revenues of $650,000.

Community

The authors of the project initially chose Telegram and its communities as the main platform for promoting the collection, where a whole system of channels has developed, some of which are still active. For example, clubs for holders of certain species

Some ARL channels in Telegram are no longer related to the collection, as they were reoriented to other areas after the decline in interest in it. Now the collection is still active on TON's marketplaces.

Links