Mat Collishaw is turning his attention to a new kind of tulip mania.

Called Heterosis, the project is a pioneering NFT-based flower collection and immersive metaverse experience created in partnership with artist Danil Krivoruchko, snark.art, and metaverse architects EL-GABAL. Snark.art is the firm behind the og.art protocol, upon which Heterosis and several other NFT projects have been built.

The project consists of two main elements: a collection of breedable NFT flora and a virtual greenhouse—an overgrown, post-apocalyptic recreation of London's National Gallery.

Collishaw emphasized the significance of the Heterosis project as a departure from established art forms and experimentation in a totally novel medium.

"What we're trying to do is create dynamic things that evolve, mutate, and also be able to visit them in these virtual social system environments—things like this wouldn't be possible in any other medium,” says Collishaw.

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Upon minting, each collector receives a unique Heterosis flower with its own combination of traits and DNA generated based on the content of the owner's wallet. Owners can then participate in a hybridization game, becoming creators themselves.

Any two NFTs in the collection can be cross-bred, activating new mutations, colors, and patterns, to create totally new and exotic digital flower species. When a new hybrid is generated, the owner decides either to keep their current flower or replace it with the new one—thus ensuring that the number of NFTs in the collection always remains the same.

To hybridize, collectors must also pay a fee to the owner of the second parent. The price for hybridization is determined by the collectors themselves, incentivizing the creation of increasingly rare and beautiful flowers.

The minting process kicked off on Tuesday, selling out in hours during the project’s “Diamond Hands presale.” The sale continues until Thursday.

Enter the metaverse greenhouse

The digital greenhouse is accessible through a range of devices and offers high-definition, real-time rendering of thousands of vibrant flowers, trees, and other flora.

Users can even zoom in on specific flowers to get a closer look.

“You can go in there, meet other collectors, talk, and you can see all the flowers in the collection in their current iteration in this social-metaverse environment,” said Collishhaw

The immersive environment and interactive features of Heterosis represent a significant advancement in digital art and NFTs.

"We've created The National Gallery in London, rebuilt virtually as if it was neglected, abandoned, decayed, all overtaken by organic matter, as if this old analog world of painting has been neglected, destroyed, abandoned and this new burgeoning media of digital art in the shape of flowers is now taking over," he said.