Salesforce employees at war with company’s NFT ambitions

Salesforce wants to enter the NFT market and is frustrating many employees.

Salesforce employees are not entirely happy with the company’s plans to enter the non-fungible token (NFT) market. According to the Thomson Reuters Foundation, more than 400 employees around the world signed an open letter expressing concerns about the environmental impact of NFTs and the “unregulated and highly speculative”nature of these financial assets. “The number of scams and fraud in the NFT market is off scale,” write, in particular, employees.

Salesforce wants to enter the NFT market

The San Francisco-based company, which notably owns Slack, informed its employees in early February of its intentions to launch several NFT-related initiatives. Among them is NFT Cloud, which will help users create NFTs and place them on trading platforms. The popularity of NFTs has skyrocketed in recent months, with many large companies jumping headfirst into them. All these undertakings were not crowned with success, some of them bore fruit. Adidas, for example, made $23 million from the first wave of NFTs.

and causes dissatisfaction of many employees

That said, NFTs remain highly controversial for a variety of reasons, including their impact on the environment. It takes a lot of energy to take advantage of the blockchain, which is critical for NFTs. The researchers estimate that the average carbon footprint of NFTs will be over 200 kg, equivalent to driving a gasoline-powered car for 800 km.

Salesforce’s concerns about the environmental impact are also largely driven by the company’s positioning itself as a leader in sustainability—the Super Bowl ad even featured Matthew McConaughey touting the company’s sustainability commitments.

A Salesforce spokesperson told Thomson Reuters: “We welcome feedback from employees and [we] take pride in building a culture of trust that makes them strong enough to express different points of view.”The company also said it will organize consultations with employees in the coming days. To be continued!