Adidas said on Thursday that it will join the Metaverse in conjunction with the Bored Ape Yacht Club, gmoney NFT, and the PUNKS comic.
Adidas announced today that it has purchased a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT and is collaborating with Bored Ape creators Yuga Labs and others in the space to enter the metaverse—an emerging vision of the future internet in which users interact in shared 3D worlds with their own NFT collectibles—following recent teases.
Adidas revealed the Ape NFT on Twitter, with Adidas-themed gear placed on top, as well as a film previewing the partnership. Aside from the Bored Ape Yacht Club, Adidas is collaborating with Gmoney, a well-known NFT collector, and Punks Comic, an unauthorized Ethereum NFT derivative project based on the popular CryptoPunks.
While the iconic Louis Armstrong song “What a Wonderful World” plays, the trailer depicts 3D avatars inspired by Gmoney, a Punks Comic original character, and Adidas’ new Bored Ape figure descending into a world with a luminous Adidas emblem on it.
Today we leap Into The Metaverse with @BoredApeYC, @gmoneyNFT & @punkscomic. It’s time to enter a world of limitless possibilities.https://t.co/LmgtrRn20c pic.twitter.com/40kU8tayrS
— adidas Originals (@adidasoriginals) December 2, 202Adidas has bought the NFT #8774 Bored Ape Yacht Club and will transform it into Indigo Herz, a metaverse persona. The NFT was acquired in September for 46 ETH, or slightly over $156,000 at the time, according to public Ethereum blockchain data obtained through the marketplace OpenSea.
Representatives from the various stakeholders detailed the partnership in a Twitter Spaces chat held in conjunction with the launch. The character has been in development for five months, according to an Adidas spokesman, and will be included in the upcoming NFT edition of the comic, which will be released next week.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club is one of the most successful NFT ventures, with 10,000 unique, drawn avatars selling for millions of dollars on the secondary market. According to data from CryptoSlam, the initiative has produced moreover $1.3 billion in cumulative secondary trade activity across all collections since debuting in April.
Celebrities like Jimmy Fallon, Post Malone, and Steph Curry utilize them on social media, while music producer Timbaland and record label Universal Music Group are also forming metaverse music groups based on their own Bored Ape avatars.
An NFT is a digital item’s deed of ownership, and it may represent profile images like Bored Apes, as well as other artwork, video files, and other digital items. Owners of bored apes have commercialization rights to their avatars, allowing them to produce and sell derivative projects, tangible objects, and other items.
Adidas, on the other hand, has worked with the real Bored Ape Yacht Club brand in addition to purchasing and employing its own avatar in this situation.
The term “metaverse” alludes to the internet’s future vision, in which users would interact in immersive 3D environments via avatars. As the metaverse takes shape, user-owned NFT assets such as profile photographs are intended to become a vital building element.
adiVerse anyone? 🤔 What should we build, together in @TheSandboxGame? ⬇️ https://t.co/VbAdIi9cxN
— adidas Originals (@adidasoriginals) November 22, 2021Adidas also just announced a partnership with The Sandbox, a planned Ethereum-based metaverse game. At yesterday’s DCentral Miami conference, Mathieu Nouzareth, a board member of The Sandbox, acknowledged the Adidas partnership, but did not elaborate on the planned activation.
Erika Decker Wykes-Sneyd, Vice President Global Marketing Communications for Adidas Originals, discussed the challenges of moving a traditional corporation into the decentralized world during today’s Spaces talk.
“The calls that we have quite often have lots and lots of lawyers on them,” she said, “because it really is fundamentally a massive mindset shift for the way companies run organizations.”
