Chicago to let vaccinated teens mint NFTs of themselves as part of COVID-19 prevention effort

NFTs • May 19, 2022, 5:48PM EDT
The Block

The Face Forward Project, a COVID-19 prevention effort focused on vaccination, is minting the portrait of vaccinated teens into non-fungible tokens (NFT). 

According to a Chicago government release, the effort is meant to reward young people who have vaccinated themselves against COVID-19. Teens can have their portrait minted onto a one-of-one NFT to keep or to later resell on a secondary marketplace. 

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The NFT multimedia platform VAST will give NFTs to the teens who choose to participate, and each NFT includes an excerpt from work from the Chicago-based musician Keith Harris.

While NFTs have been used to augment charity donations, this appears to be one of the first times digital collectibles have been used to reward public health initiatives, especially that against the coronavirus pandemic. 

NFTs have slowly crept into health and lifestyle spaces, however, particularly with the success of move-to-earn platform STEPN, a blockchain-based gamified step platform that encourages users to walk or run.

About Author

MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.