Rhinoceros are fascinating animals. Like their “cousins” the elephants they are what we usually refer to as “prehistoric”. In the earliest human records of history cave paintings found in France dating back to the ice age depict Rhinos, suggesting that these lovely and dangerous weirdos once roamed the earth in a much more widespread fashion than we have thought.
Humans have apparently always had a soft spot for rhinos, again going back to cave paintings they are significantly overrepresented in the paintings compared to how fairly uncommon they were even that way back in the day. And no wonder. These mammals are beyond cool when you study them. There are loads of websites that list “the 15 coolest facts about rhinos'' out there so we won’t go too deep down into that rabbit hole, but we’ll come back to one of these fun facts later.
The human obsession with the rhinos has however also taken a toll on the species at a fundamental level. All over Asia it’s commonly believed that the powers of the horn can help humans with all kinds of diseases, ranging from deadly fevers to impotence. The saddest part is that there is no scientific evidence of this being the case whatsoever. The horns are made from keratin, a protein that is the same substance that human hair and fingernails are made from. So instead of killing rhinos to be able to get a boner you could just as well bite your fingernails.
Today there are only around 29,000 rhinos left in the world. Down from 500K at the turn of the century in 1900. A dangerously low number in general, but some of the subspecies (out of a total of 5) is down to almost nothing. The Northern White Rhino residing in Kenya are down to only two females rendering the subspecies virtually extinct. Some consolation to White Rhino lovers is that the southern version has both males and females. But it’s very sad nonetheless.
So what if they disappear though? Species go extinct all the time through history for tons of reasons. Does it really matter? Well, the answer to that question is that we don’t really know. What we do know is that nature is built on synergy between every living (and often non living) thing. It’s what makes the world go round. And we also know that we don’t know nearly anything about how the synergies actually work or how deep the rabbit hole goes. Some synergies are extremely vivid and clear though - like the Red-billed oxpeckers and their relationship with our beloved rhinos.
These awesome little birds spend their lives hanging out on the backs of rhinos (and zebras) picking off bugs like ticks and other parasites that plagues the rhinos. The oxpeckers get food and the rhinos get pest control. But the “collab” doesn’t end there. The oxpeckers also make sure to warn the rhinos of approaching danger, mostly in the form of humans. Rhinos have very poor eye-sight and if danger approaches from down wind they have a hard time reacting until it’s too late. The oxpeckers function as an alarm system that keeps their eyes out and loudly sound the sirens if something is up. How awesome is that?
Synergetic relationships is also a rarely spoken of but huge upside built into what blockchain has enabled through what’s commonly known as web3. It brings people together to help each other in a way unprecedented in human history.
Using the Rogue Rhinos as an example, like we went over in Part 1, the first iteration of the project was a scam where the devs rugged it and vanished with the cash. The new team, shaped by Ryan Farroki is completely assembled through web3’s built in infrastructure. From what was left of the rugged community, a bit of willpower, digital communication and the Ethereum blockchain a new and perfectly balanced team was assembled from all over the world. The new project was formulated, the original community was “patched over”, graphic design and art was created, communication and content was developed, smart contracts were written, charity organizations was onboarded, financial deals were made and written into the smart contract everyone can trust, mint was planned and is opening today after months of work - and the team members have never even met IRL.
This is obviously not something unique to the team and the project of Rogue Rhinos specifically, loads of well functioning web3 teams and projects have been created the same way - blockchain and web3 magically creates human synergy and trust and we think this is (together with business composability) maybe one of the least discussed and discovered potentials of web3.
It seems like blockchain technology and what has been created around it almost mimics nature in how different “competence profiles” serendipitously meet and forms a long lasting synergetic relationship. Just like the rhinos and the red-billed oxpeckers.
And just like in nature, we have no idea how deep this rabbit hole of synergetic relationship building blockchain and web3 actually goes. We’re just scratching the surface here too and we’ll most likely keep being surprised with how amazing this infrastructure is, similar to the surprises we find in nature as science keeps evolving and discovering new things.
And although it’s extremely exciting we might be wise to pause and try to keep as much of nature's synergy as possible as we move forward. The synergetic relationship between rhinos and birds wasn’t as swiftly created as setting up a discord and writing some solidity code - it took at least hundreds of thousands of years for nature to create this connection.
Through the Rogue Rhinos we can all help play a small part in preserving a wonderful animal and all the synergetic connections it is a key part in. Blockchain synergy that helps save natural synergy that is beyond our comprehension. Now tell me “NFTs are just a scam”, I’ll be over here minting Rogue Rhinos in the meantime.
Rogue Rhinos pre-sale starts today Thursday March 24th. The public sale kicks off tomorrow Friday. Don’t sleep on the Rhinos. Help revive them and nature will most likely thank you.
Studio TBD will mint Rogue Rhinos for the Studio TBD DAO Collection. Mint the Studio TBD Membership token to become a member of the DAO and join us on this exciting journey.
Here is a deck presentation of Studio TBD DAO and our Membership NFT mint.
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