Chris: Hi there! How are you? What's your name?
Carl: My name is Carl. I am the founder of Dezertdawgz NFT. When I'm not otherwise engaged with this project or rescuing dogs, my day job is as an Air Traffic Controller. You might think that is a stressful job but it's a cakewalk compared to trying to get an NFT project off the ground!
Chris: DezertDawgs NFT is essentially every dog lover’s dream. The concept works for the NFT space and uses the proceeds to save dogs IRL. Please explain your idea to our readers in simple terms.
Carl: I have watched the development of NFTs with great interest over the last year or so. I'll be honest, even as a long time crypto enthusiast I was bemused by the concept to begin with and struggled to see what value NFTs were bringing to the space. As projects have developed in terms of utility and community it has become clear to me that NFTs have the potential to bring great value in many aspects of our lives. I see that the gamification of NTFs has taken off dramatically. This is great if you want to spend your life in the metaverse but what about those of us who want to see this technology harnessed to solve real world problems? I was blown away by the success of the belugies NFT project and the good that was able to do in terms of making donations to worthy causes. It got me thinking that we could use the power of NFTs to multiply our ability to rescue dogs from the streets of our adopted home country of Qatar.
We have been rescuing dogs pretty much since we first arrived in the Middle East 8 years ago and discovered what a huge problem the region has with stray and dumped dogs.
The nature of the region is that most people who live here are expats, people come and go, sometimes at short notice. Too many people take on a dog without doing their research and finding out how expensive it is to transport them back to their home country when they leave. Whilst many people stand by their pets and take them home, a significant minority just leave them behind to fend for themselves. I'm not really sure how people justify leaving a loyal member of their family behind but they do, and it sucks.
The sad result of this trend is that there is a large population of dogs roaming the streets and industrial areas of Qatar. The traffic here is bad, chaotic and fast moving. Many dogs are killed or badly injured crossing roads. We rescued one only last month with two badly damaged from legs and we are spending almost $3000 on a surgical reconstruction of one of his front legs so that at least he has three good legs to walk on. As you can imagine, his case is not unusual and the costs involved in rescuing and rehabilitating these poor creatures racks up at an alarming rate.
If the traffic doesn't get them then the weather probably will. Trying to find water or scraps of food is significantly more arduous in summer when it is 50C during the day and stays above 40C all night. Only the strongest and luckiest survive.
A successful Dezertdawgz mint will allow us to help hundreds of dogs this year to get off the streets and find new homes abroad.
Chris: Each one of the 2222 NFT to be released will be unique in traits and characteristics. What are the distinctive features of these NFT tokens?
Carl: The dezertdawgz NFTs are based around 50 traits which are combined algorithmically so that each image is unique. There are 13 dogs. Some are based on previous rescues, others are a bit more elaborately coloured and our rarest is solid gold! These dogs are combined with a number of backgrounds, collars, glasses and hats with varying rarities to give us the possibility to create a large number of unique NFTs. I drew the art myself and whilst I'm no Dali, I am very pleased with the results. I'm certainly a better artist than I am a coder!
Carl: The public mint price of a Dezertdawgz NFT will be 0.8 Sol. There are 300 whitelist spots available which will allow whitelist token holders to mint 2 Dezertdawgz each at the reduced price of 0.7 Sol. One of the reasons we chose the Solana blockchain was the very reasonable gas fees compared to the crazy situation currently happening with Eth transactions. The fees for minting an NFT on the Solana blockchain is around 0.016 Sol which is very reasonable. That is the advantage of a network that can handle 60000 transactions per second.
.jpg)
Chris: You also state that there are some gratitude tokens. Please share more about the plan of using those tokens in the interest of the investors.
Carl: For every dog that is successfully expatriated we will be rewarding one Dezertdawgz holder with a bonus NFT. We plan for these to be tradeable on secondary markets but they will also entitle the holder to a free item of merchandise from our upcoming collection. You can join our social (Twitter and Discord ) so as not to miss new updates.
Chris: In fact, we would like you to introduce us to your team. How does each one of the members contribute towards DezertDawgs?
Carl: The Dezertdawgz team is very compact! I had the idea, created the art and am co-ordinating the minting and promotion of the project. I initially thought I could do it all myself but I have come to realise that it's better to focus on your strengths and employ experts to do the rest. To that end I have been working with a developer called Bob Lazar. I am pretty sure its not THE Bob Lazar so whilst he hasn't provided us with any Moscovium, he has done a great job getting the coding side of the project up and running.
That aside, the driving force behind Dezertdawgz is our chief rescuer, my wife Caroline. When she isn't out picking up injured dogs she is co-ordinating vet treatment, foster homes, flight buddies and the endless paperwork associated with exporting animals to Europe and Canada.
Chris: To summarize, could you please share some of the plans you have in mind for the future of DesertDawgs?
Carl: My first hope for Dezertdawgz is that we have a successful mint in early March. Obviously if the project sells out then we will be able to realise our ambition to help our target of 500 dogs this year as well as providing much needed support to other dog rescue organisations both here and abroad. We hope that this project will help to put the spotlight on the plight of street dogs both here and the wider region.
At this point it is hard to see past the current phase as I have been so head down and focused on getting the project off the ground. Ultimately I think if we can build a good community of like minded people then we can continue to do more good work. I would love to be able to spread the initiative to other countries in the region. We might even branch out into cats! The cat problem makes the dog situation look like a joke. There are probably 5 street cats for every dog here, they are just a little better at looking after themselves.
As I alluded to earlier, we plan to launch a range of merchandise to help support the project. There will be substantial discounts available to our holders.
What I would say is that we are here for the long haul. So many NFT projects seem to be a hit and run cash grab, Obviously there are many projects who are out to build a community and give their holders value. Whilst I can't promise that buying a Dezertdawgz NFT will make you wealthy, I can promise a warm fuzzy feeling in your heart knowing that you will be making a real difference to dogs who deserve the chance to be part of a loving family and not have to worry about being shot, run over or starved.
Adopt a Dawg and save a life. It's as simple as that.
