Lennart Laabs remembers his grandparents’ allotment garden well. When he was visiting them on the Baltic Sea, he would harvest potatoes and strawberries. He picked fresh currants from the bushes. And when the sunflowers were in bloom and the bees and bumblebees hummed and buzzed around him, he felt particularly good. He was a child then. Today Lennart is studying business administration, he lives with his parents on Lake Starnberg and he wants to save the bees with an NFT project.
The project is called “NFBeehive”, a collection of 20,000 different digital bees. The bees are NFTs, i.e. non-fungible tokens. Thanks to blockchain technology, they guarantee the authenticity of digital works, such as works of art, pieces of music or videos. Lennart plans to donate 30 percent of the sales to charitable organizations.
What does he want to achieve with it? “Bees are incredibly important to us, without them we can’t really survive. I want to create awareness so that people can really understand it,” says Lennart.
It could be one story among many. A story about a young man who is studying business administration, has a more or less good idea, gives it a socio-ecological appearance and hopes that it will sell better that way. After all, this is about bees that want to be saved – that pulls. And this is about the hype in the art market – and about a technology that few know and even less understand.
But that’s not a story like that, or at least only partially – because Lennart Laabs wants more than that.
“It’s important to me to create a movement. It’s about a ticket for the future, a vision that you share.”
A conversation in Tutzing on Lake Starnberg on a frosty Saturday morning. Lennart – blond, slightly gelled hair, light gray knitted sweater, black sweatpants – is sitting on a gray coach in his parents’ house. It’s a modern, spacious house. Bright light flows through the floor-length glass windows and the lake can be seen behind them. When Lennart talks, he bends forward slightly, his arms confidently on his knees, and he gesticulates gently with his hands. Most of the time he wears a smile that rarely fades. “It’s important to me to create a movement. It’s about a ticket for the future, a vision that you share,” says Lennart. This vision means: He wants to unite people who believe in both the environment and the future of the crypto world. Of environmental protection and digital art. On bees and NFTs. Just like himself. In his project, he plans to merge two previously different worlds into one. He tries to hit a nerve, especially with young people.
Anyone who owns one of Lennart Laabs’ bees is holding something unique
The 21-year-old speaks passionately about his project. One of the bees in his collection is a “little work of art”, not drawn individually, but generated by the computer: some of the bees wear a traffic cone as a hat or ski goggles, some have an exhaust pipe instead of a spike, others have an exhaust pipe instead of wings Propeller – each of the animals is composed of more than 150 different characteristics. “I think the artwork is cool, it’s a new and particularly funny way of drawing bees,” says Lennart.
Anyone who owns one of Lennart’s bees holds a unique item in their hand – and pays a little more than 100 Matic, a crypto currency, the equivalent of 170 euros. A fair price in Lennart’s eyes. After all, you not only get a work of art, but also a ticket for a permanent membership: an owner of a digital bee can win honey jars, entire apiaries, backpacks or even bee certificates for the adoption of a single bee. The goal? Long-term, albeit indirect, animal welfare: “The products all come from organizations that deal exclusively with saving bees,” says Lennart. Anyone who invests in him is doing good. At least that’s what Lennart says.
“If you address a topic, especially with bees that interest a lot of people, and you get a community behind you, then that’s an ingenious marketing tool,” says Sven Wagenknecht. He is editor-in-chief of BTC-ECHO, an online magazine on blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
But Lennart also wants to set a personal example with his project: “You can damage the world even further with the current state of affairs. Or you decide as a young person to have a real influence,” says Lennart. Like him. Sure, everyone can ride a bike more often or go without meat. “I wanted to do more than I can as an individual,” he says, “that has always been a nice thought for me.”
The student tries to keep the ecological footprint of his NFTs as small as possible
Lennart is aware that NFTs are actually a real climate killer and that they contradict the motto of his project. On average, the transaction of an NFT consumes around 83 kilowatt hours of electricity – this corresponds to the electricity consumption of eight households in one day. But the student tries to keep the ecological footprint of his NFTs as small as possible. Instead of the common crypto currency ether, Lennart relies on Polygon (Matic). Allegedly this produces less CO2, but it is really difficult to verify.
Lennart puts a lot of effort into his project. By their own account, twelve hours a day, at least. Since the beginning of September. Always in front of the laptop. Or, if he has to discuss, on the phone. Then the student walk “like a bumblebee” through the whole house. Back and forth. To the top floor. Then all the way back down. Meetings are waiting every day, he has to develop marketing strategies, establish contact with companies, non-profit organizations and investors who support his project, actually he should constantly update the website. “My heart and blood are in this project,” says Lennart. “I want to prove to myself that I won’t give up halfway when it gets difficult.” The 21-year-old has rarely had to show inner strength. His life went smoothly, maybe too smoothly, but who knows?
In February of this year, Lennart discovered his weakness for cryptocurrencies. And that gave rise to the urgent need to start your own NFT project. Something that brings independence and by no means monotony. Today Lennart support four of his friends at “NFBeehive” because: “You can’t do enough. You can only do more,” says Lennart.
Lennart Laabs got a beehive for his birthday
The only question left is: is it worth it? Lennart’s NFT community currently has just 74 members. In order to sell his collection, Lennart needs 3,000 to 4,000 members. “I thought that it would be easier to draw people’s attention to such a project. I was very wrong about that,” admits Lennart. Nevertheless, he is someone who is so easily diverted from his optimism. “I believe that we have created something incredibly good that has not yet existed in this way,” says Lennart. And: “I have the feeling that everyone is looking for identity and for their task, especially in their youth. Many then start something and realize that it is not the right thing. For my part, I have found my calling.”
So he’ll go on. Will Lennart Laabs be successful with his project? There is no guarantee of that. It was Lennart’s birthday a few days ago. His best friend’s parents gave him a beehive. What is he looking forward to now? To breed your own bees in the coming spring.
Young people
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