Coachella announced on Tuesday that it will be auctioning off 10 NFTs that will serve as stand-ins for lifetime festival passes. The move is part of a larger deal with cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
The auction starts on Friday, Feb. 4 at 10 a.m. PST and will run until Friday, Feb. 11 at 5 p.m. PST on nft.coachella.com and ftx.us/nfts.
Called the “Coachella Keys Collection,” the 10 “one-of-one” NFTs will offer buyers lifetime festival access and VIP on-site experiences for 2022 that include front row seats at the Coachella Stage, on-stage access at a specific tent, or a celebrity chef dinner.
The auction winners will get passes for one weekend Coachella event each year and permanent access to “virtual experiences” produced by Coachella.
When asked for details about the effort, a Coachella spokesperson directed ZDNet to a help site that said the lifetime access NFTs can be bought, sold, or traded.
“Access to lifetime Coachella passes lasts year after year, forever, until you decide to sell your NFT. Once it is sold, the new owner of the NFT is granted this lifetime access,” the company explained. “To ensure we are able to fulfill your lifetime Coachella festival passes and experiences, Key owners will need to verify their ownership on the redemption page each year by April 1st. Keys will be locked for redemption from April 1st to April 30th. There is only one owner of this NFT in the world at any given time.”
As part of its partnership with FTX, Coachella will be launching an NFT marketplace and will be releasing its own set of NFTs. Sam Schoonover, innovation lead for Coachella, said the partnership with FTX would allow them to have the infrastructure and support for their future blockchain initiatives.
“We’ve all seen how NFTs enable true ownership of art and media on the internet. We wanted to take it one step further and use NFTs to enable ownership of experiences in the real world too,” Schoonover said. “Only blockchain technology can give us the unique ability to offer tradeable lifetime passes to Coachella for the first time ever.”
Coachella is also selling a range of other NFTs that will come with real items as well, such as photos and posters. The festival is selling 1,000 NFTs for $180 each that are redeemable for a physical copy of their festival photography book.
FTX US President Brett Harrison said some of the money brought in from the NFT project would go toward charities like GiveDirectly, Lideres Campesinas, and Find Food Bank.
They noted that the NFTs are minted on Solana, a blockchain platform that allegedly consumes the least amount of energy among its peers. FTX is purchasing 100,000 tons of carbon offsets through two providers in an effort to “take ownership over its portion of the environmental costs of mining.”
“Not only are we excited to partner with a progressive forward-thinking music festival in Coachella, but also working together to make the world a better place. When connecting with the Coachella team, our values were synchronized, and we are thrilled that a portion of each sale of NFTs in this unique drop will go to local valley charity organizations,” Harrison said.
