GO ASIA TRAIL

Satsukiyama Zoo（五月山動物園）, operated by Ikeda City, Osaka Prefecture, is attempting to sell valuable videos and photos taken by zookeepers working in the zoo as NFT. It is very rare for a local government to sell contents using NFT.

https://twitter.com/satsukiyama_zoo/status/1623576342741803009

I myself have been addicted to wombats for the past two years, and I visit the Satsukiyama Zoo frequently. They have 4 animals in the zoo, and they all have their own unique characteristics and are very cute.

https://satsukiyamazoo.com/

The Satsukiyama Zoo is the second smallest zoo in Japan and is located in Ikeda City, a city with a population of about 100,000 in the northern part of Osaka Prefecture. The zoo features four wombats, a rare animal native to Australia, of which only six are kept in Japan. Wombats used to be kept in zoos all over Japan, but now there are only two, including Satsukiyama Zoo in Nagano Prefecture. So they are quite rare animals.

And the world's oldest wombat named "Wine" is kept at the Satsukiyama Zoo, and he set a Guinness record last February 2022, and is still alive at this time. His age is 34 years old, which is more than 100 years old in terms of human longevity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxP7moo5-jw

Today (February 11, 2023), an event is also being held locally to commemorate Wine's oldest renewal, and as part of the event, Wombat's NFT (Non-Fungible Token) will be sold on line NFT.

https://nft.line.me/store/brand/88

However, I think NFT is something that most people are still not familiar with, with the majority of people saying they don't really understand it, although it has been a word that has been around for the last year or so.

NFT stands for "Non-Fungible Token," which is directly translated into Japanese as "Non-Fungible Token. LINE has made an easy-to-understand video on this topic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3drIldBxvGs&t=1s

The problems NFT wants to solve are roughly the following three

Proof that this content is authentic

Proof of authorship of this content (where did it originate?)

Proof of ownership of this content (who is the current owner? Who was it in the past?)

As an example of a painting, when you buy a painting, it is very important to know if it is "genuine" or not.

If it is authentic, it will be valued and sold at a high price. For example, famous paintings by Picasso, Van Gogh, and others fetch high prices, especially if they are authentic. However, it is difficult to tell whether a painting is genuine or a replica by its appearance, so an appraiser or other person will appraise it and certify whether it is genuine or not, and issue a certificate to prove it.

However, videos/photos taken with a digital camera or smartphone are digital data and can be easily copied and pasted, and they can be a perfect duplicate (with physical paintings, it is virtually impossible to reproduce 100% no matter how you try to resemble them). However, consumers want the "real thing," and "NFT" is a mechanism to prove it.

NFT itself uses blockchain technology, which is used for cryptographic assets such as Bitcoin, and the "author (creator)" and "current owner" of this content are recorded in a distributed ledger that exists on this blockchain network. This distributed ledger is distributed and managed by computers around the world, and it is quite difficult with current technology to tamper with this ledger.

By recording the "author" and "owner" in the ledger, which is difficult to tamper with, the true author and owner are proven.

The most important would be to raise funds for the zoo's operation. Since admission to the Satsukiyama Zoo is actually free, the majority of the operating funds come from Ikeda residents' taxes. The rest of the funds are raised through merchandise sales and occasional crafunds, and NFT is one of the new ways to raise funds.

The nice thing about NFT is that the owner can make secondary sales. The good thing about NFT is that the owner can make a secondary sale, which is so-called resale, but in the case of NFT, even in the case of resale, a kickback can be made to the author (zoo) side. In the case of general NFT, the percentage can be freely set by the author. For example, if 10% is set, and a photo book of a wombat with an original price of 34,000 yen becomes popular and can be sold for 50,000 yen, 5,000 yen will be returned to the author's zoo side.

In the case of physical paintings, if a painting initially priced at 100,000 yen becomes very popular and sells for 100 million yen, the author does not receive any kickback, but in the case of NFT, even if the painting is resold, the author will receive a kickback.

In other words, the more active the sale/resale of NFT wombat content becomes, the more money the zoo will have, which can be used to fund zoo renovations or to accept new wombats.

Consumers can purchase the "real thing" even if it is digital content. Also, through the purchase and sale of the content, consumers can support the zoo.

The contents being sold here are videos and photos taken from angles and in situations that only zookeepers can capture, so if you are a wombat fan (wombat batter), you will probably want to buy these contents. In particular, you can obtain so-called ASMR-like contents such as wombat sounds that cannot be sensed outside the zoo's fence, chewing sounds of eating food, and the sound of their claws scraping against the ground.

Is it a good thing that a kind of collector-like thing that allows you to own these valuable contents can be done with just a smartphone? As a side benefit, there is also the possibility of making some extra money through resale (provided that the content is popular and the transaction price rises).

At the time of writing this article, less than 24 hours have passed since the sale began, but sales have surprisingly not increased (personally, I wondered if the 34,000 yen snapshots could be sold all at once).

This is probably because the content is probably unfamiliar to NFT, so most people want it but are "not familiar with NFT" or "not sure how to purchase" in the first place. Therefore, I think that sales have not increased much. I think it would have been better if the zoo and Ikeda City had explained a little more about what NFT is.

I also feel that the zoo side should frequently add videos and photo contents of wombats. Wombat fans want information on angles that only people inside the zoo can take pictures of, so I hope that the zoo will continue to do so!

Also, to increase sales, I think you could have added a premium to the NFT. For example, it would have been nice if there was an experience that added value to owning an NFT, such as "those who own the NFT priced at 34,000 yen can sit in the front row to watch the ceremony" or "you can break a smash ball together.