GuardianLink NFT Drop — Kalpana Chawla Collection
The NFT marketplace, GuardianLink decided to launch an NFT collection to celebrate the first Indian-American Woman Space Astronaut on International Women’s Day (8th March). According to Financial Express, the NFT collection can be bought from beyondlife.club, but it can’t be found on the featured page nor the search bar for some reason.
Kalpana Chawla NFT Drop
The NFT drop, comprising 10 never seen before images of Kalpana, is very personal to her husband Jean-Pierre Harrison, beyondlife.club said in a statement.
The collection included 250 NFTs in total (25 copies for each of the 10 images). These photographs that have been never shared in a public forum will consist of personalized quotes of Kalpana Chawla under each NFT image.
Remembering Chawla, her husband Jean-Pierre Harrison said that she fought with sheer resilience and raw passion to be the first Indian-American to go to space. “In recognition of Kalpana’s achievements, I have approved the release of NFTs consisting of rare and previously unseen photographs of moments from her life. Proceeds from this sale will be donated to an Indian charity with an outstanding record of supporting and educating children from some of India’s poorest areas”, said Harrison. Glimpses of these tokenised images have not been released on public domains and the cost of Chawla’s NFTs has yet to be published.
About Kalpana Chawla
An inspiration to many, she was the first India-origin American Astronaut to go into space. Born in Karnal, Haryana, India, Chawla moved to the United States for higher studies, eventually beginning her career at NASA, conducting research in fluid dynamics at the Ames Research Center in California. She became the first woman of Indian origin to flew on the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997.
She was among the seven crew members who could not make it back to the earth. She won many medals including the Congressional Space Medal of Honour, after her untimely death. She has been an inspiration for millions across the globe, especially in her home state of Haryana.
What’s the scam? Is there a scam?
Off-late, GuardianLink has been providing a service to create a decentralised NFT marketplace in minutes. Beyondlife.Club is powered by them and they are known for hosting collections like the Amitabh Bachchan NFT drop and the Chakra collection.
According to publications like India.com, Economic Times, Outlook India, and many others, the collection dropped on 8th March and was live on beyondlife.club. However, the NFT’s cannot be found on the marketplace, and aren’t even featured on their home page (as of 31st March 2022).
It’s quite bizarre that a collection that’s hyped so much isn’t easily accessible by normal users on the marketplace, and personally I think that such unplanned NFT drops are the reason people stop believing in the space.
Kalpana Chawla’s NFT drop is supposed to support Indian charities, but who can tell for sure how many sales have been made and how much money has actually been donated? Three weeks into the sale, and no updates from any of the publications that shared the story initially. Was it just to create fake hype, or was it just a PR stunt by the beyondlife.club and GuardianLink team, who knows?
Do let us know in the comments if you’d like us to “follow the money” and learn more on the drop! :)
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