Ice piers also have NFTs

Reporter | Si Linwei

The mascot of the Beijing Winter Olympics, the "Ice Pier", set off a rush of peripheral buying. In addition to the physical periphery, the ice pier now also appears in the digital world.

On February 9, NFT trading platform nWayPlay said on Twitter that the digital blind box with the official IP authorization of the International Olympic Committee is about to go on sale, including the NFT of the mascot "Ice Pier".

It is reported that the digital blind box will be sold at 1:00 a.m. Beijing time on February 12, with a total of 500 pieces, $99 each, and each person is limited to 5.

According to the platform's official website, the digital blind box design is inspired by the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, because Beijing is the only city in the world to host both the Summer Olympic Games and the Winter Olympic Games, so it has a unique commemorative significance.

The official website of nWayPlay states that it has obtained the official exclusive IP authorization of the International Olympic Committee, and the image of the ice pier in the blind box will be displayed as an athlete, performing various winter sports, such as alpine skiing, steel frame snowmobile, snowboarding, etc., at the same time, the blind box also contains 2 versions of the official emblem of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and a poster.

However, because the site is aimed at overseas users, and the number of payments is limited to 500 in US dollars, and the release time is also in the early morning, the cost of Chinese user participation is extremely high, and it is as difficult as the current snapping up of the physical version of the "ice pier" around the pier.

However, the campaign's gameplay of combining some new concepts with Olympic IP is noteworthy.

In addition to the NFT blind box, nWayPlay has also released a Beijing Winter Olympics-themed blockchain game called Olympic Games Jam: Beijing 2022, in which players can choose their own appearance, compete for gold medals on behalf of their country, and win the official NFT digital badge of the International Olympic Committee.

It is not difficult to find that there are many new terms in these activities that are unfamiliar.

For example, the digital blind box is actually a new concept in the field of NFTs, that is, multiple NFTs are sold together and randomly obtain various NFTs within a limited range, similar to the doll blind box in the real world, which is different from the previous way of buying an NFT separately.

Blockchain games, compared with ordinary games, they have a significant feature is "Play to Earn" (play while earning), that is, in addition to the player to experience the game content itself, the producer will also use the crypto economy model to increase the playability and financiality of the game.

The NFT, full name "Non-Fungible-Token", translated as "non-homogeneous token", is an application of blockchain technology, which can provide unique and ownership credentials for digital content, such as pictures, text, videos, music and other formats, and is one of the hottest new concepts in the past two years.

Well-known artists such as Wong Kar-wai and Takashi Murakami have participated in this new trend in recent years, and some people regard it as one of the infrastructures of the metaverse concept.

However, due to the financial attributes of the NFT itself, it has gradually developed into a "digital collection" in the mainland, that is, cultural IP combined with blockchain technology to issue digital content with collectible value.

The Olympic Games is one of the world's largest sports IP, so in recent years there has been a related digital collection, this new technology combined with the innovation of big IP, has attracted many companies and brands to participate in this trend.