Leopards NFT is a collection of single-edition art Protector Tokens each tied to one of 73 famous wild Leopard of Londolozi, with a portion of proceeds continuing their conservation and guardianship. As NFTs, they exist on the Ethereum blockchain, meaning it is possible to definitively own one or more of these tokens (more on what this means later).
You may have seen a few of these Tokens alongside the profile pics of their Custodians around the Londolozi Blog.
An example comment with the Protector Token among your Londolozi Live badges
As a Custodian of one of the elusive Leopards NFT Protector Tokens, you are the owner of a 1/1 digital artwork representing a unique leopard. You can learn more about these 73 ultra rare Leopards NFT Tokens, and browse which ones are still available, at the Leopards NFT website: About, Browse Tokens, FAQ.
Celebrating Legacies
Leopards NFT constitute a cutting-edge innovation in the meeting of the digital future and natural conservation, bringing together guardianship of these majestic animals, their offspring and habitats, but also their legends, their legacies, with the inevitable adoption of a web3 landscape.
For example, as the sole Custodian of the iconic Mashaba 3:3 Female you have not only directly supported the continuation of the formidable, still-thriving Sunsetbend Dynasty (of which she was 3rd generation) ‘in the wild’ through Londolozi’s conservation initiatives, but you are also championing and celebrating the existence of this regal individual animal — there is only a single Protector Token that exists for each leopard.
The Mashaba female is currently Londolozi’s best-known leopard. Her relaxed nature means she is comfortable around the vehicles.
As time goes on, and because these NFTs are permanently and immutable stored on the Ethereum blockchain, these first-ever Leopards of Londolozi NFT Tokens will most likely be a visionary investment for their early-adopter Custodians, passed on to future generations or easily put up for sale at any time on established NFT marketplaces, such as OpenSea.
As an esteemed Custodian of one of these Tokens you can easily link your web3 wallet, where the NFT resides, to your Londolozi Blog profile. Doing so will add the NFT Protector Token to your profile in the Londolozi ecosystem, and indicate to others that you are the Custodian.
An example profile featuring three Protector Tokens
Example Custodianship of a Leopards NFT Protector Token
Becoming a Custodian
If you are new to the exciting world of web3, don’t worry, you’re still early to the party. In this post we’ll explain how you can go about getting hold of one of these first-edition Leopards of Londolozi NFTs, going through the steps of:
- Creating a wallet and acquiring Ethereum using Coinbase
- Purchasing a Leopards NFT with your web3 wallet on OpenSea
- Connecting your web3 wallet to the Londolozi Blog
- Bonus: Theory crash course
We’ll be using Coinbase as the exchange and using the Coinbase Wallet Extension as the wallet throughout this guide although you can use any platforms with which you feel comfortable as the process can be completed in any number of ways. MetaMask would be another excellent, safe, established wallet choice. Although this may seem like a lot to wrap your head around for first time users, for more seasoned web3 participants it’s really pretty simple: get some ETH, buy the NFT, link it to the Londolozi Blog dapp.
*Please note that the information provided herein is for educational and informational purposes only. It should not be construed as financial advice. You should not rely solely on the information provided and should seek independent professional advice before making any financial decisions.
Before we dive into the practical steps, you may have noticed there’s a fourth, bonus section in the outline, the Theory crash course, which is a short, curated overview of foundational theory touching on the underlying mechanics of blockchain, Ethereum and NFTs, which may assist new web3 inductees in understanding the terminology and what exactly it is we are doing and why, and why it is so revolutionary. If you’re curious and have the time, feel free to jump down there.
Okay, let’s get into it.
1. Creating a wallet and acquiring Ethereum using Coinbase
So we’re going to need a web3 wallet with an ETH address, and to fund it with ETH.
Generating a wallet is simple and there are countless platforms to acquire ETH, but we’re going to run through the process for US, UK, EU, Australian and Canadian citizens, using the biggest, safest and most established cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase. Because it is regulated, established and legitimate, you need to include some personal details and verify your identity when setting up an account, much like opening a bank account, to protect you as much as the company.
The exchange has myriad articles explaining the process step by step (with supplementary videos), so we won’t rehash those, just point you to areas of their comprehensive help center. If you have any issue with these steps, simple reach out to Coinbase who will be happy to assist.
Here are the steps in this section:
- Create a Coinbase account
- Calculate cost
- Buy ETH
- Install the Coinbase Wallet Extension
- Move ETH to the wallet
1.1 Create a Coinbase account
Here’s the article on how to create, verify and link a payment method your Coinbase account: Create a Coinbase account, verify and link a payment method.
1.2 Calculate cost
You’ll need to buy enough ETH to cover the sale price of the Leopards NFT Protector Tokens of your choice (starting from 1.2 ETH), as well as to cover the fees for interacting with the blockchain (known as gas). While the gas fee is normally quite insignificant, it’s important to have enough extra to facilitate transactions (and extra ETH is always useful for future transactions) because there are always fees involved in interacting with the blockchain: these are the incentives for participant computers to operate the network.
Let’s find out the listed price for the Leopard NFT we want to purchase, if it is available for sale. You can see if a specific token is listed for sale and the sale price on the Leopards NFT website (or the OpenSea marketplace), for example (at time of writing), the Tutlwa 3:4 Female is AVAILABLE and will cost 1.2 ETH.
Tutlwa 3:4 Female is Available to purchase and costs 1.2 ETH
Generally and in the case of the initial sales, the price of a Protector Token is directly linked to the rarity score of that leopard, which is calculated based on the specific traits, characteristics, lineage and general esteem of each leopard (more on rarity scores here), however ultimately the listing price is whatever the seller deems it be. Briefly, there are three rarity tiers, Rare, Very Rare and Extremely Rare:
The rarity score is denoted by the number to the top left of the Token and touching/hovering over the Rarity score will reveal its breakdown.Give it a try on the famous Mother Leopard:
Okay, so we need 1.2 ETH to buy the Token, and we’ll need some extra for fees to transfer the ETH from the Coinbase exchange to our wallet, and to execute the sale transaction on the OpenSea marketplace later. 0.05 ETH should be more than enough and leave us some extra for other transactions down the line.
1.3 Buy ETH
This Coinbase article with video shows how to buy cryptocurrency from Coinbase.com and from the mobile app: Buy crypto.
- Choose Ethereum (ETH)
- Enter the amount of ETH to buy — if necessary press the round ‘swap’ button to the right of the amount to change from USD to ETH denomination
- Double check everything before purchasing
On completing this procedure you should now have 1.25 ETH in your Coinbase account (perhaps your first cryptocurrency, congratulations!).
1.4 Install the Coinbase Wallet Extension
The Coinbase Wallet Extension (or MetaMask as an alternative) is your passport to web3 on the internet. As a browser extension it allows you to use your Coinbase Wallet anyway across the internet from within the Chrome or Brave web browser. Through it you can connect your wallet to web3 enabled websites — otherwise known as decentralized apps (dapps) — such as the marketplace OpenSea to buy a Leopards NFT, and the Londolozi Blog to link your NFT to your Blog profile, as we’ll see later.
The video in this Coinbase article explains how to set up the Coinbase Wallet Extension in your browser elucidating key concepts like the importance of keeping your 12 word passphrase safe: Set up the Coinbase Wallet browser extension.
Once you’re created a new wallet it’s time to move our ETH to that address so we can interact with OpenSea and the Londolozi Blog.
1.5 Move ETH to the wallet
Here are the steps for linking your Coinbase account to, and funding, the Wallet Extension. You’ll probably want to transfer the full amount (minus whatever amount is used as gas to fund the transfer transaction).
- Link your Coinbase Wallet and Coinbase account on desktop
- Once access has been authorized, select Ethereum as the asset you’d like to transfer from your Coinbase account
- Select your existing Coinbase balance as the source of funds, enter the amount you’d like to transfer to Coinbase Wallet, and click “Preview send”
- After reviewing the details of your transaction, including any applicable Coinbase and network fees, then click “Confirm”
That’s it! You’ve set up a Coinbase account, installed a web3 wallet into your browser and funded it with enough Ethereum to purchase a Leopards NFT Protector Token. Next up we’ll go through the process of acquiring a token from the NFT marketplace OpenSea.
2. Purchasing a Leopards NFT with your web3 wallet on OpenSea
OpenSea is the world’s first and largest web3 marketplace for NFTs and crypto collectibles. It serves as an intermediary in the sale of NFTs between parties by handling the Ethereum smart contracts involved in transferring ownership. While it is easy enough for an NFT holder to make a direct sale with a willing buyer on the Ethereum blockchain, it is more tricky for these parties to find each other, which is where OpenSea comes in.
Here’s is a rough guide to the steps:
- Browse the Leopard’s NFT website to find the available Token you’d like to custody. Let’s say we want to purchase the Tortoise Pan 4:3 Male and it is available.
Use the filters at the top to find your favorites; here showing only the Mother Leopard Dynasty sorted by Rarity.
- Click on the Token to go to its individual page.
- To go to the OpenSea page for the Token, underneath the description of the leopard you can either click the BUY NOW button, or the OPENSEA button at the bottom.
- On the OpenSea sale page, click Buy now
- Choose Coinbase Wallet as the wallet to connect
- This will open your Coinbase Wallet Extension and prompt you to connect to the OpenSea website. Go and ahead and connect.
- Confirm signature request.
- Follow the remaining steps to purchase the Token using the ETH in your wallet and sign the transaction once you have checked everything.
Congratulations, you are now the Custodian of a first-edition Leopards NFT Protector Token. Time to link our wallet address to our Londolozi Blog profile so the NFT can be displayed with our other badges.
3. Connecting your web3 wallet to the Londolozi Blog
Now that you have your Leopards NFT Protector Token at your Coinbase Wallet Extension address, the last thing we need to do is to connect our wallet with the Londolozi Blog, allowing the blog to read our address to scan the blockchain for any Leopards NFTs associated with it.
- Log in to the Londolozi Blog and go to your Edit Profile page.
Access the Edit Profile page by clicking your profile pic in the top bar, then clicking on your profile pic (with the paintbrush edit icon) again in the profile dropdown.
Another way to edit your profile is by going to your profile and looking for the Edit Profile button.
- Go to the web3 tab
- Hit the Coinbase Wallet button to open your Coinbase Wallet Extension.
- The Wallet Extension will prompt you to connect with the Londolozi Blog. Go ahead and Connect.This connection will only allow the website to read your wallet address; no further actions can happen without further consent.
- Once connected, your Leopards NFT Protector Tokens will appear on the Edit Profile page and you will see your wallet address in the Connected address field.
If you are the Custodian of more than one Token, you can select the default one, which will be shown first, by checking its checkbox.
There you have it! You Protector Token(s) will now be a prominent part of your insignia everywhere around the Londolozi digital ecosystem, and you will noted as the Custodian of your Tokens, with a link to your profile.
Should you ever wish to, you can use the Remove Address button underneath the address field, or open the Coinbase Wallet Extension and disconnect the site there, to remove the address from your profile. Of course you can simply reconnect it again at any time from the Edit Profile page; the NFT will remain in your ETH wallet regardless.
That’s a wrap! Congratulation if you’ve managed to purchase your very own Leopards NFT Token. Should you ever require any assistance, please reach out to one of our team.
4. Bonus: Theory crash course
The Leopards NFTs exist as immutable entries in the Ethereum blockchain.What!? Why? How? Okay, let’s break this down.
Blockchain
Firstly, blockchain, check out this 2 minute Coinbase video which explains the core concept accessibly: Blockchain.
Ethereum
Next up, Ethereum. Coinbase again summarizes it well:
Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain platform founded in 2014 by Vitalik Buterin. Like Bitcoin, Ethereum is an open-source project that is not owned or operated by a single individual. This means that anyone, anywhere can download the software and begin interacting with the network.
Unlike the Bitcoin network, the primary purpose of Ethereum is not to act as a form of currency, but to allow those interacting with the Ethereum Network to make and operate ‘smart contracts’ without having to trust each other or use a middleman. Smart contracts are applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud, or third party interference – a smart contract will work exactly the same every time it is used.
Ethereum uses a ‘virtual machine’ to achieve all this, which is like a giant, global computer made up of many individual computers running the Ethereum software. The virtual currency unit that allows this system to work is called ether. People interact with the Etherum network by using ether to pay the network to execute smart contracts.
Ethereum aims to take the decentralization, security, and openness afforded by blockchains and extend those to virtually anything that can be computed.
NFTs
What is an NFT, exactly? This 2 minute Coinbase video breaks it down.
Wallets
A wallet is just a piece of software (or specialized hardware in the ideal case), like the Coinbase Wallet Extension, that holds a public address and a private key, that form a pair, both long, unique strings of characters. The public address is kind of like a website or email address, it can be shared, things can be sent to it, and it forms part of the blockchain, whereas the private key (or it’s human-friendly 12 word phrase equivalent) is like the password that cryptographically proves ownership of the address; it is the wallet’s task to securely keep the private key private.
Ownership of an NFT is absolute (until put up for sale by the owner) because the wallet address of the owner is replicated across all participant computers in the Ethereum network, on the historical chain of blocks of transactions (addresses interacting) so no centralized authority can change ownership of a token as network consensus is required. This decentralized distribution is a central tenet of any respectable blockchain cryptocurrency like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Putting it all together
This means a Leopards NFT Token is yours absolutely because you control the address on the blockchain which has sole capabilities to manage it, giving only you, the wallet owner, the ability to sell it or send it to someone else, and this will remain so indefinitely, far into the future, as long as we still have computers and the internet (so barring some cataclysmic factory reset of human technology). Any computer can query the long Ethereum blockchain which goes back to the currency’s inception: for example, which wallet address owns the Camp Pan 4:3 Male Protector Token? If the address returned is under your control, the NFT is under your control, indisputably. This fact cannot be changed without the private key signing off on it. This is absolute sovereignty and one of the main value propositions of true cryptocurrencies — decentralization enforces the rules neutrally and everyone from anywhere can participate equally.
The Tokens are minted irrevocably into the ETH blockchain, costing a fee paid to the computers of this network for running the blockchain. In order to become the owner of a token, we need to purchase one that has been put up for sale by its current owner, at the price they set, through providing the requisite amount of ETH.
This transaction is done through a smart contract on the blockchain itself and so, again, is absolute, because the contract code is unchangeable and its execution has no bias or human involvement (you can think of the Ethereum blockchain as a distributed computer). The contract is open for everyone to see so it is anti-fragile and it is simply processed impartially when the conditions are met, which makes it smart, in this instance when the right amount of ETH is sent to the sale contract address triggering a change of ownership of the NFT to the sending address.
Why Leopards NFT
In the presence of these leopards, one feels the spirit of nature. To gaze on a leopard in the wild is to be drawn into the wisdom of nature. With the Leopards NFT collection, leopards will once again take their place as the mystical creatures that bridge worlds. The collection connects the digital realms with the wilderness. To attain one of these rare NFT’s connected to a living leopard is to be threaded on energetic cord by that animals’ presence to life, conservation and the wisdom of nature.
These Leopards are walking into the digital realm where only the most elite trackers will be able to find them. Each one of these unique depictions is embedded with secret codes of Fibonacci wisdom unfolding with the unique intelligence of nature to guide the stewards of those leopards deep into their own natural wisdom.
No other NFT’s rarity is pegged to creatures as wild and rare as these leopards. A true first in the NFT space. This NFT is a symbol that you are a steward of the wild. And like the leopard, a rare keeper of the wisdom of nature.
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