TECH TALK What Companies Can Learn From Salesforce’s Doomed Exploration Into NFTs Lesson No. 1 Align Company Values Today And Into The Future The sustainability aspect points to the first lesson learned from this, which is the importance of being vigilant to how future plans align with current values. Part of employees’ complaints centered on the advertisement Salesforce debuted during Super Bowl LIII. “The New Frontier” featuring actor Matthew McConaughey, poked fun at the space race and Elon Musk’s investments in space exploration, and promoted Salesforce’s commitment to sustainability. In the 60-second ad, McConaughey states, “It’s time to engage. It’s time to plant more trees,” noting a need to focus on restoring the earth over investing in the metaverse. The misconception around NFTs is that because they are virtual, they have a gentler environmental impact—that’s simply not true. NFTs have a massive carbon footprint. A recent study by NFT Club, an online community of NFT buyers and sellers, found that each NFT transaction would require the planting of 1.4 trees for a resulting carbon offset. NFTs have such a large footprint because the many blockchain-based activities associated with NFT transactions, such as minting, bidding, selling and transferring ownership, require high power to operate. A single transaction using Bitcoin, a popular cryptocurrency, is estimated to use about 1,173 kilowatt hours of electricity, or the same amount of energy needed to power the average American home for 42 days according to a recent report from MoneySuperMarket, a UK price-comparison website and financial services firm. One study by the University of Cambridge estimated that Bitcoin mining consumes more energy each year than the country of Argentina, or the amount of energy used by Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft combined. When the energy to support these transactions is sourced from nonrenewable resources, cryptocurrencies produce a significant amount of greenhouse gases, thus contributing to global warming. Salesforce’s NFT Cloud directly contradicts its sustainability pledge and in the letter, employees describe the financial gains of NFTS as unevenly distributed. Lesson No. 2 With Finances, Look Before You Leap Another concern of Salesforce employees are scams prevalent in the NFT market, which is largely unregulated. The letter says, “The When employees of the cloud-based software company learned about Salesforce’s plans to create NFT Cloud, a virtual marketplace, more than 400 employees protested against it, citing environmental and fraud concerns. Salesforce announced in February its plans to develop NFT Cloud, a virtual marketplace where users can buy and sell non-fungible tokens (NFTs). To the public, the news from the San Francisco, cloud-based software company and customer relationship management (CRM) platform, also a widely used tool in the promotional products industry, was certainly not scandalous; rather, it seemed Salesforce was following suit to other companies breaking into NFTs. But when it was announced internally, Salesforce employees disagreed. Less than a month after the announcement, more than 400 employees had signed an open letter protesting against it. The letter, which was addressed to Salesforce co-CEOs Marc Benioff and Bret Taylor, cited fraud and environmental concerns as reasons against it, explaining how the NFT Cloud would challenge the company’s five pillars of trust, customer success, innovation, equality and sustainability. One unnamed Salesforce employee told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that he’d quit if the NFT plan follows through and “find a company that lives by its stated values.” Product Spotlight The Cupanion Bottle is a simple, yet digitally connected product that recipients can count on. Reusable and made from durable Tritan, and manufactured sustainably in New York, each bottle features a barcode that connects to the Fill It Forward App to track the environmental impact of their reuse. Add a logo or design on two sides, and choose from 15 lid colors to mix and match; Pantone color-matching available. Fill It Forward / PPAI 792815, S1 www.fillitforward.com 70 | MAY 2022 | THINK
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