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.
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.
