Germany’s Federal Intelligence Bureau, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), launched a non-fungible token collection in a bid to recruit cyber talent. The first-of-a-kind recruitment strategy involved an NFT collection called Dogs of BND, which contains 999 dog-themed NFTs featuring dog avatars dressed in cybersecurity-themed wearables.
According to a recent report, the German intelligence agency locked access to the NFT collection in a blockchain challenge. Cybersecurity and blockchain experts would have to use hints provided by the agency to crack the puzzle and mint their own Dogs of BND NFT in order to qualify for a job at the BND.
The theme was reportedly inspired by two dogs, Inka and Alex, who serve at the intelligence agency’s branch offices. The recruitment strategy was launched by the BND’s social media editorial team and a blockchain team from the research and development wing. The BND published details of the challenge on its official Instagram page earlier this month.
Speaking on the Dogs of BND NFT challenge, the BND said in a statement:
We are also looking for talents in the field of cyber security in the future. Our service dogs, the “Dogs of BND”, have already received tens of thousands of likes as photos and are hanging as calendars in many offices and households in Germany.
The NFT challenge was launched on June 5, 2023. At the time of writing, 71 candidates had minted at least one of the dog-themed NFTs after finding a character string that led to an Ethereum address. Of the 999 available NFTs, 12 were set aside to be given away as part of a more difficult challenge from the intelligence agency.
Data from NFT marketplace OpenSea showed that despite being the first-of-its-kind NFT collection, Dogs of BND failed to get much traction in terms of volume and floor price. At the time of writing, the collection had a total volume of 1 ETH ($1907) with a floor price of just 0.05WETH.
