Heterosis:an innovative NFT collection of flowers

The driving force behind the Heterosis NFT project is British artist Mat Collishaw. He was drawn to the phenomenon of tulip mania in 17th-century Holland, where the prices of flower bulbs skyrocketed to thousands of guilders. Today, some crypto skeptics draw comparisons between the speculative bubble of tulip mania and the surge in NFT prices. “The more I read the more interesting and stimulating the parallels and differences with NFT collecting became, ” Mat recalls. 

However, Mat's fascination with Heterosis goes beyond the economic aspect. As an artist, he enjoys incorporating plant motifs in his artwork, and his grandfather was a renowned flower breeder. The artist's fascination with the process of creating plant hybrids, involving both conscious human selection and the unpredictable forces of nature, ultimately led him to the concept of breeding highly realistic NFT flowers in a virtual greenhouse for both aesthetic and financial purposes.

The flower collections of the participants are housed in the halls of the London National Gallery, which is depicted in a post-apocalyptic state. The semi-ruined rooms of this famous architectural monument are now adorned with thousands of vibrant flowers. Insects buzz around, and a gentle breeze wafts through the broken windows. The avatars of the collectors can freely move through the gallery, interacting with each other and closely examining the specimens in the collection using the multiple magnification function.

The first flower in your collection, with its distinct DNA and unique combination of traits, will be randomly determined by the AI. Not only will it be given genetic characteristics, but it will also be bestowed with a name. This name will be crafted using words from Jorge Luis Borges' story "The Library of Babel," which intriguingly depicts a metaverse where all of humanity's created texts are stored.

A second flower for crossbreeding can be purchased from other collectors. The AI generates the result of crossbreeding. You can continue the selection process with either the resulting flower or the original one.

At the initial stages, the flowers in your collection have a limited number of traits. As you participate in the project, new types of genetic characteristics and mutations become available to you. You can improve the appearance of the plant, breed a rarer specimen, or create a flower that's more in demand on the flower market of this metaverse.

By the way, each collector sets the price for their flower's participation in the selection process themselves. Rarer traits, such as color, petal shape, and so on, are more expensive.

Mat Collishaw developed his unusual project in collaboration with Ukrainian-born digital artist Danil Krivoruchko, blockchain company Snark.art (OG.Art platform), and content studio EL-GABAL.