Salesforce Employees Rebelling Against NFT Plans

Salesforce, a cloud-based software company of the United States (US) is facing backlash from its own employee over its plan to enter the non-fungible token (NFT) market. More than 400 employees of the software giant have signed the open letter of protest.

The letter signed by the employees cites environmental and economic issues as the reason behind their rebel. The company had communicated the NFT plan to its employees through an announcement in which it said that it is exploring a series of ‘NFT initiatives that also include ‘NFT Cloud’ which will let the users create and sell NFTs.

Addressing Salesforce’s co-CEOs, the letter raised concerns about NFT’s impact on the environment and economy. It also termed NFTs as ‘unregulated, highly speculative financial assets.’ The employees also mentioned allegedly ‘overwhelming’ scams and frauds in the NFT space. They wrote and highlighted the environmental concerns citing research backing their claims of ‘uneven distribution of the financial benefits of NFTs. Some of them even threatened to quit the company and indicated towards upcoming ‘increase in attrition’ if the plan is executed, as reported by Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The plan of NFT by Salesforce came as a shock to some employees considering the company’s recent advertisement campaign for Super Bowl, which precisely promotes sustainability. The advertisement featured actor Mattew McConaughey who appeared as an astronaut in space, who could be seen unimpressed over there and coming back to Earth, he advocates people to engage, plant more trees, build trust and make more space for all.

Back in December 2021, the company has published a blogpost on predictions for 2022, Mathew Sweezey, Director of Market Strategy at Salesforce, said, “To unlock their full potential, brands are going to have to start creating utility via the token. Time is a great example. They launched TimePieces, which is a collectible and has utility. Each NFT grants the owner unlimited access to Time’s content, special event access, and a few other small perks.”

“In 2022, you’re going to hear a lot more about NFTs, and there will be winners and losers. Winners will move past NFTs as simply collectible to find greater utility through the token,” Sweezey added.

What is NFT?

In simple words, NFT or ‘Non-fungible token’ is everything that can be converted into a digital form. NFT may include, any artwork, drawing, photos, videos, GIFs, music, and even a social media post that can be traded digitally using cryptocurrency like Bitcoin.

NFTs have a unique identity and are backed by Blockchain, which is a digital form of ledger. Also, each trade on the blockchain is recorded and can be seen by anyone, also, no changes can be made once recorded.

However, NFTs have attracted heavy criticism for their carbon footprint, facilitation of risky speculation, and for not having robust fraud protection. A study has found that millions of trees have to be planted in order to offset the carbon emission of NFTs. As per NFT Club, a single tree has a capacity to produce 60 kilograms of CO² during its lifetime and that means 1.37 trees can offset a single NFT sale and in order to offset the life of an NFT, 3.52 trees are needed.

“Once the NFT has been mined, added to a blockchain, and minted, the carbon cost of each individual piece continues. Every time a bid is submitted for an NFT it costs 23kg of CO2 (0.38 trees), every sale of an NFT produces 51kg of CO2 (0.85 trees), and every transfer of an NFT produces 30kg of CO2 (0.5 trees),” NFT Club said. It further added that secondary sales of NFTs also carry a large carbon cost.