An exclusive design sketch by exterior chief designer Peter Varga was auctioned off as a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) for a value of 30.25 Ethereum, which corresponded to a value of around 90,000 US dollars at the end of the auction.
Between 2 and 6 August 2021, collectors and Porsche fans had the opportunity to purchase the drawing at auction via the US platform SuperRare. The special feature is that it was offered as a digital and physical asset; the total proceeds are now donated to the non-profit organisation Viva con Agua. The sports car manufacturer’s first NFT activity was supported by the subsidiary Porsche Digital and the recently spun-off technology start-up Fanzone as an NFT platform for digital trading cards.
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“With the NFT initiative, we wanted to test how well such an offer would be received in the crypto community and what kind of response we could generate with it,” says Sandra Mayer-Denzel from Porsche Deutschland, who managed the project. “We can definitely be very satisfied with the result and are pleased that we were able to generate an impressive donation sum for Viva con Agua.”
Lars Krämer, Innovation Manager from Porsche's Sales Department and co-initiator of the project, adds: “The initiative to auction the Non-Fungible Token was implemented in an interdisciplinary team within a very short time, just Porsche-like. We are correspondingly proud of the result and look forward to learning from it for possible further innovation projects in the field of NFT and digital art at Porsche.”
“The auction is a great action by Porsche. We are very happy about the donation and the amount that the sketch brought in,” says Carolin Stüdemann, Managing Director of Viva con Agua de Sankt Pauli e. V. “With the proceeds, we support water projects and can thus improve the living conditions of several thousand people. Because water is life!”
NFTs are based on blockchain technology and relate to a specific asset. This means that an NFT represents the digital ownership of a unique item. The digital goods can be stored, sold or traded in a virtual wallet. So far, NFTs have been used primarily in the field of crypto art and for digital collections.
Blockchain platform for trading cards
Porsche has realised the project together with Fanzone. The company builder Forward31 – a business unit of Porsche Digital GmbH – founded the Berlin start-up in June 2021. The young company operates an online platform on which fans can collect and exchange digital player cards as NFT and also profit from their increase in value. Fanzone uses blockchain technology to ensure the rarity and identity of the collector’s items.
Viva con Agua, a non-profit organisation founded in Hamburg in 2006, is committed to providing access to clean drinking water, sanitation and hygiene. For this, Viva con Agua supports water projects worldwide, for example in Uganda and South Africa. The vision of the non-profit organisation is “water for all – all for water”. In order to generate revenue, Viva con Agua regularly uses art auctions in addition to traditional donations.
