The Golden State Warriors launched a nonfungible token (NFT) collection on the OpenSea platform Tuesday morning, becoming the first professional sports team to do as such.
“This is the wave of the future,” Warriors president Brandon Schneider said. “So we’ve been studying what the best way for us to get involved and create something for our fans is.
“NFTs have been around for years, but they’ve really become more mainstream and popular this year. The inflection point for us was really just watching NBA Top Shot start to explode.”
The NBA has seen huge returns from its blockchain-based platform that permits fans to purchase, sell and trade numbered versions of officially licensed video highlights. Since dispatching the previous fall, in a joint effort with Dapper Labs, the NBA has rounded up an expected $500 million in deals from Top Shot.
Schneider said the Warriors have been studying the NFT commercial center for as long as a quarter of a year, figuring out how best to make an collection that will connect with their fans.
At last, they chose to make digital championship rings to commemorate every one of the group’s six NBA titles just as digital ticket stubs from a portion of their most famous games, for example, their triumph over the Memphis Grizzlies on April 13, 2016, what broke the NBA single-season record for wins (73).
A part of the proceeds from the NFT sale will go to the Warriors Community Foundation, which attempts to promote educational equity in the Bay Area.
“This has been a tough year,” Schneider said, referencing the COVID-19 pandemic. “We usually do a poker tournament with all of our players that benefits the foundation. But we couldn’t do it this year. So we’re hoping this helps fill the gap because we want to be able to donate what we typically do.”
The fundamental auction went live Tuesday morning and will proceed through Saturday. There are isolated closeouts for 1-of-1 things, similar to an actual ring planned by Jason of Beverly Hills that commemorates each of the six NBA titles, and encounters, for example, marking a one-day contract with the franchise and meeting the team.
The Warriors worked together with the artist Black Madre and Medium Rare, the organization that joined forces with Tampa Bay Buccaneers tight end Rob Gronkowski a month ago to make and dispatch a NFT collection that sold out and acquired an estimated $1.8 million, as indicated by Cointelegraph.
OpenSea, the biggest NFT marketplace on the world, acknowledges just the cryptocurrency ether.