Nike has been one of the top fashion brands in web3 through RTFKT, the NFT, and digital clothing it acquired in 2021. The apparel giant has managed to bring its brand into the space. Nike now aims to boost its efforts by launching a new platform named .Swoosh.
The new platform has been dubbed the epicenter of Nike’s efforts in the web3 space. It’s meant to spotlight Nike’s NFTs and digital clothing initiatives, including how to have customers as co-creators in the future and share the royalties from the digital products.
The new platform (.Swoosh) will be used as a hub for launching digital clothing such as sneakers and t-shirts for avatars to be used in web3 games. The platform will also use web3 technology to unlock real-world benefits for the users. Examples of such benefits include chats with pro athletes and exclusive physical apparel.
Other popular NFT projects, such as the one from Adidas, another top brand in the fashion industry, come with real-world perks or physical apparel.
The company has plans to allow more users to join the closed platform by the end of the year and before the first drop in January 2023. There are plans by Nike to open user registrations by the end of this week.
Nike’s NFT clothing will be minted on the Polygon blockchain, which is an Ethereum sidechain network. The previous Nike and RTFKT drops were launched via the Ethereum mainnet. There are also plans for Nike to be selling each pair of digital sneakers for less than $50.
“We are shaping a marketplace of the future with an accessible platform for the Web3-curious,” said Ron Faris, Nike Virtual Studios GM, in a release. “In this new space, the .Swoosh community and Nike can create, share, and benefit together.”
A representative from RTFKT clarified in a tweet that the studio is not overseeing the implementation of the .Swoosh project, but it is supporting Nike in its efforts to expand further into web3. The company has stated that Nike will release digital clothing for RTFKT’s CloneX NFT avatars, whose owners will be able to use it in the supported metaverse worlds and Web3 gaming.
An NFT (Non-Fungible Token) is a digital asset stored on the blockchain that represents the ownership of a unique digital object such as a video, audio, profile picture, or digital clothing. The NFT trading volume spiked to $25 billion in 2021, and Nike made a major push into the NFT space by acquiring RTFKT in December last year.
Nike and RTFKT have since then partnered to create digital NFT sneakers called CryptoKicks on the Ethereum blockchain. The sneakers can be changed using Skin Vial NFTs.
RTFKT is popular for its CloneX PFP project, which it created together with the popular artist Takashi Murakami and launched in November 2021. The project has managed to generate up to $762 million in trading volume in the secondary market.
Data obtained from the public blockchain and aggregated by Dune shows that Nike has generated $93 million in NFT sales to date and $92 million from NFT royalties.
