Way back in November 2021 we first interviewed the team behind Earth Natives. A lot has happened since then, with multiple NFT drops with the aim of funding an eco house build for a family in Brazil.
We caught up with the team to find out how the project has progressed, how the house build went and what the future holds for the Earth Natives.
Hey, it’s been a little while since we last spoke, before the first drop even. Why don’t you fill us in on what has happened since then?
Hello!!! What a whirlwind these past months have been, to be honest feels like at least a year has gone by. There’s lots to cover that I’m not sure where to begin but let’s just dive in.
We have finished minting all three of our collections which meant we were able to completely finish building the sustainable home and hand over the keys to Trinidade and her family. We were even fortunate enough to have Charles Hoskinson quote retweet our video of this!!
We also minted our one of a kind NFT that was auctioned off on Artano where 100% of the profits went to planting trees and have recently donated 100 NFTs to the Climate Neutral Cardano Alliance, which will help plant 100,000 trees in Madagascar.
We have participated in a lot of other projects events and done some pretty cool Twitter spaces, such as Bullish Dumpling’s Dungeon and even co-host a weekly space with Clay Lips and Bored Claude Parody Club where we focus on #NFTs4Good.
Then the other big news is that our mission driven stake pool TERRA has been up and running for a few months now and has already minted two blocks.
Has the team changed/grown since we last spoke?
The team is still the same.
You recently handed over an eco house to a family in Brazil. What can you tell us about this? How were the family that received the house chosen? What about the eco-friendly/sustainability aspect of the house?
We did indeed. It was very exciting and an incredibly humbling experience, one that has forever impacted our lives. As an Institute, it is our mission to teach others how to build sustainable homes using earth as a building material, so by building and donating this house we were able to really showcase the technology. The family chosen was well-known in their local community to be living in very poor conditions, and as Trinidade was a single mum to two daughters, one who has special needs, it really was a simple choice to pick them.
In terms of eco-friendly/sustainability aspects of the house one really needs to understand how soil-cement bricks (compressed earth interlocking bricks) function as well as how the house is actually built.
First of to make the bricks, they require low energy consumption in the extraction of raw materials, they do not generate any type of pollution or waste in their production process, and they dispense with the need for burning which generates great energy savings and also minimises deforestation as 6 to 9 trees per thousand bricks are preserved.
The bricks also provide higher quality and comfort to the house as they are a lot stronger than your average brick and due to their holes, which form thermoacoustic chambers, they are able to control the temperature inside the building and also help isolate noise. Moreover, in the execution of the work, the need to cut the walls for electrical and hydraulic passages is eliminated, which generates a substantial decrease in the volume of debris generated and still reduces the consumption of settlement and levelling mortars.
In a more simplistic explanation, the compressed earth interlocking bricks are ecological, low energy consuming, waste reducing, super-efficient to build with and lessen construction time by up to 30%, require fewer materials and labour, therefore reducing the overall cost of the build and provide better comfort and style to your home.
Was the house build fully funded through NFT sales?
Yes it was and then we had planned to auction our one of a kind Owlada to help furnish the house but Trinidade’s local community had followed our journey and wanted to give back themselves, so they actually helped her out which was so beautiful to see. And we then got to use the auction profits to buy and plant trees.
What next for Earth Natives? Is it a case of “job done” or are there plans for the future, involving more houses?
We have a few things in the pipeline including but not limited to:
- Our mission driven stake pool, TERRA
- IEM Governance tokens;
- Our illustrated lore with audio narration; and
- Creating a 3D Earth Building Museum in order to display the different types of techniques that use earth as a building material in a virtual experience.
In the long term, we hope to be able to teach small communities around the world how to produce the bricks themselves so that they can then provide jobs and housing for their locals as well as help us to make the future more sustainable.
If there are future plans how would you be looking to fund them? Through sale royalties, further drops?
At the moment it’s just the virtual Museum that would need funding and this most likely will be done through a new drop however we are still very much in the planning stage.
Obviously the crypto market as a whole is down right now, the price of ADA is as low as it has been for a while, where do you see the future of your project and of NFT projects in general?
We are a long-term project that will continue to grow and have experienced the market rising and falling before.
As long as projects have faith in what they are doing and trust that their project is in it for the long haul then keep on pumping. We are strong believers in Cardano so we just need to wait it out.
What projects, other than your own, do you like at the moment?
There are so many we could list but to name a few:
Clay Nation and Cornucopias are projects that really stand out for us. We are big supporters of ADA Ninjaz, Ugly Bros, Bored Claude Parody Club, Clay Lips, Introverts, Brightleaf Labs, Cardano Proxies, and this list could go on for a while…
Any plans for collabs in the future?
We are constantly collaborating with other projects however we have one in particular that is very important but we can’t disclose any information at this time.