From small animal shelters to large zoos like Vienna’s Tiergarten Schönbrunn, animal care requires consistent funding. Sponsorships and guardianships offer a sustainable way to support these institutions. Our solution makes it easy and cost-effective to set up a sponsorship system and even incentivize visitors to become sponsors.
This project was developed during the workshop “Smart Contracts: Token creation with ERC20” at the Creative Media Summer School 2025. Over the course of a week, our instructor Markus Angermann gave my team and me an intensive introduction to blockchain technology and smart contracts. In the final one and a half days, we applied our newly acquired knowledge to build a practical application using smart contracts and token issuance. On the last day, we pitched our idea and presented a working proof of concept.
Smart contracts deployed on the blockchain are a powerful technological innovation. They allow logic to be encoded as functions that execute in a public, decentralized, and tamper-proof environment. Building on this foundation, tokens emerge as versatile representations of digital ownership. Whether fungible (like cryptocurrencies) or non-fungible (like NFTs), tokens are cryptographically verifiable representations of value, rights, or assets. Through smart contracts, these tokens can be transparently created and transferred.
While a common use case is issuing NFTs for digital art, we wanted to go beyond that niche. Introducing: the digital Zoo-Sponsorship.
Project Description
Zoo-Sponsorship is a web application that allows users to symbolically adopt animals. Each adoption is represented by an NFT on the Ethereum blockchain. We use the ERC-1155 standard, which enables efficient management of multiple token types within a single smart contract.
As part of the sponsorship experience, each supporter receives a unique, visually appealing NFT—designed not only as a digital token, but also as a collectible. These NFTs serve as tamper-proof certificates of sponsorship, permanently recorded on the blockchain. Because our system is built on decentralized infrastructure, every contribution is transparently stored and publicly accessible. This makes the on-chain sponsorship records independently verifiable.
Beyond their symbolic and emotional value, these NFTs can also offer real-world utility. For example, they could eventually function as digital admission passes, creating new opportunities for visitor engagement and benefits.
The sponsorship records are stored on-chain, while the NFT metadata and images are stored on IPFS. Their continued availability depends on keeping the content pinned.
Technical Overview
- Token Standard: ERC-1155, enabling multiple unique token types in a single contract.
- Metadata: Each animal has its own metadata file (name, description, image, attributes) stored on IPFS (InterPlanetary File System).
- Adoption Mechanism: When a user adopts an animal, the corresponding token is transferred from the zoo’s wallet to the user’s wallet.
- Wallet Integration: The web app connects to the smart contract via a user wallet (e.g., MetaMask), enabling intuitive and direct interaction.
Tools Used
OpenZeppelin contracts: Collection of building-blocks for the development of smart contracts.
Remix IDE: Web-based environment for writing, compiling, and deploying smart contracts.
Next.js: React-based framework for building the frontend of the application.
Wagmi: React hooks library for interacting with Ethereum wallets and smart contracts.
Hardhat: Local development environment for simulating, testing, and deploying smart contracts.
Pinata: IPFS service used to store NFT metadata and images.
MetaMask Wallet: Browser extension used to manage user wallets and sign blockchain transactions.