Anima, an augmented reality startup, wants to build a bridge between the physical world and the metaverse. And it thinks a global treasure hunt for NFTs, floating in virtual space, is the way to do it.

Last week, Anima launched PHASE MN:01 Mirror, a collection of 8,888 unique augmented reality NFTs created with street artist Demsky. Unlike most headline-grabbing NFTs of late, which are only visible as image files, Mirror AR NFTs will interact with the real world through smartphone camera filters, a la Pokémon Go or the real-world Bitcoin-hunting game created by the same developer. (These Mirror AR NFTs are not to be confused with Mirror Protocol, a platform for synthetic stocks, nor with Mirror, the decentralized blogging platform that lets writers turn their essays into NFTs). 

What makes these digital artworks unique is how they will change upon interaction with the physical world. New owners of Mirror NFTs—built on Ethereum using Palm—will be dropped coordinates to 10 still-secret locations around the globe; traveling to these locations and placing their NFTs in these landscapes will permanently alter these NFTs visually, audibly, and in their composition on the blockchain. Each Mirror NFT can be altered up to eight times and, if resold, will retain these changes. 

Other NFT projects such as Bored Ape Yacht Club have had success allowing owners to change or ‘mutate’ their NFTs, but in those cases, owners kept both the original NFT and the variant, whereas here, the original piece is permanently altered.