NFT's, the metaverse and plant conservation

The mushrooms were very clear in their message. I was sitting in my living room, looking out the window at the bounty of flora below, happily enjoying what the Golden Teachers had to offer. Hearing messages from plants is a common occurrence for me after consuming psilocybin, and on this particular day, their voices were louder than usual. In the 20+ years that I have been studying the relationships between people and plants, I have had many conversations with my community of flora and fungi.  

They were telling me of a world developing right now, in the virtual space and a time in the near future where the lure of immersive alternative reality would be a welcome respite from the physical world. They knew why it was happening and they weren’t mad about it, but they did have a request. It was simple. Don’t let them forget about us as the technology advances to where it’s hard to discern between what’s real and what's not.

I thought about that a lot. What does it mean for flora, especially spiritually healing plants that work in tandem with human energy? If we go inside our minds completely, what happens to our plant counterparts? If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, will it cease to exist? It was enough to make me reject the metaverse forever. But, as I carefully considered the message of the plants, I knew that the answer was not to throw myself in the path of progress in an attempt to thwart it but to approach this as an opportunity to generate awareness and respect for entheogenic plants on a scale previously unimaginable.

So, I began to think about ways in which this new medium of NFTs could bring awareness, respect, and abundance to entheogenic plants. For those new to this concept, here is the gist:

1. NFTs are digital tokens that represent ownership/membership. This can be the ownership of art, or membership in a community giving holders of the NFTs all of the privileges of community membership and value of the token itself. These membership privileges can include things like exclusive online and in-person events, special products and goodies, and the ability to participate in community decision making.
2. The visual representations of these NFTs can themselves function as works of art, each with its own unique set of attributes. And, like other trading cards where there is a limited number of identical pieces, certain attributes of an NFT are more rare, making them more valuable. The buying and trading of NFTs is like digital baseball cards or art dealing. But ours holds a deeper purpose.

Personal Plants is partnering with ΔFLORA by SACRΞDGARDΞN, to bridge the worlds of Web 2.0 and Web3 and merge IRL plants with VR environments. Our mission is to create a global community of entheogenic plant enthusiasts to raise awareness around conservation and cultivation. And our vision is a future where these flora are revered both in the virtual world and physical one, and where people use their connection with plants to help maintain their connection to the physical world.

We invite you to join this community and global effort. Follow the project on Twitter and Instagram and check out our website to sign up for project updates, see our current collections, and learn more about how to set up a crypto wallet, mint NFT’s and more!