NFT Olympic Pins Announcement
SAN FRANCISCO – JUNE 17, 2021 — nWay, a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, today launched nWayPlay.com, the home of officially licensed Olympic non-fungible token (NFT) Pins. Collectors can purchase assorted boxes of NFT Olympic Pins on nWayPlay.com starting June 22, with the peer-to-peer transaction functionality on the marketplace to come online on June 29.
nWayPlay.com is a new decentralized marketplace for collectors and gamers to buy, sell, and play-to-earn various NFTs with officially licensed IPs. The marketplace will be connected to various games on nWayPlay’s platform – including the real-time Olympic-themed competitive video game to be launched in the lead up to the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing 2022 – and powered by the Flow blockchain, which offers a unique combination of scalability, usability, and environmentally sustainable features. Flow is a Proof of Stake (PoS) blockchain that does not consume large amounts of electricity that Proof of Work (PoW) blockchains, such as Ethereum and Bitcoin, consume.
Unlike Ethereum-based NFTs that deter purchases of lower-priced NFTs due to high gas fees, the Flow-based marketplace will support a low transaction fee and wider spectrum of prices, allowing more mainstream fans and collectors to participate.
The NFT Olympic Pins are part of the Olympic Heritage Collection, which celebrates the art and design of the past Olympic Games and reflects the graphic legacy of the world’s largest sporting event, such as posters, emblems, pictograms, and mascots from 125 years of modern Olympic Games. The NFT Olympic Pins are digital versions of collectible and tradeable Olympic Pins, which will have various properties generally associated with physical pins, including authenticity, scarcity, and provenance, making them true collectors’ items.
“Today marks the beginning of a new Olympic-themed digital entertainment experience consisting of NFT Olympic pins and crossplay multiplayer video games that we are developing as part of our new licensing agreement with the International Olympic Committee,” said Taehoon Kim, CEO of nWay. “We built nWayPlay on the Flow blockchain, the same platform used by NBA Top Shot, because its energy consumption associated with NFTs is dramatically lower than Proof of Work-driven alternatives.”
Collectors can obtain unique and officially licensed NFT Olympic Pins in three ways: 1) by purchasing assorted boxes on nWayPlay.com; 2) by purchasing specific pins directly from other collectors on the nWayPlay Marketplace, or 3) by earning them free of charge by playing a real-time Olympic-themed competitive video game connected to nWayPlay and to be launched in the lead-up to the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing.
About nWay
nWay, a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, is a San Francisco-based developer, publisher, and tech platform for competitive multiplayer games across mobile, PC, and consoles. The company has a strong track record of developing AAA quality games on mobile and console, such as recently launched WWEⓇ Undefeated, POWER RANGERS: Battle for the Grid, POWER RANGERS: Legacy Wars, and ChronoBlade. nWay is comprised of leading developers and senior executives from Sony, Electronic Arts, WB Games, LucasArts, Kabam, Nexon, and NCSoft. The team has collectively contributed to over a dozen hit mobile, console, and online games, including Marvel Contest of Champions, the Injustice series, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Dominations, FIFA, Battlefield Online, Lineage II, and Warhammer. For more information about nWay, visit www.nway.com.
About Animoca Brands
Animoca Brands, ranked in the Financial Times list of High Growth Companies Asia-Pacific 2021, is a leader in digital entertainment, blockchain, gamification, and artificial intelligence. Animoca Brands develops and publishes a broad portfolio of products including the REVV token and SAND token; original games including The Sandbox, Crazy Kings, and Crazy Defense Heroes; and products utilizing popular intellectual properties including Formula 1®, Marvel, WWE, Power Rangers, MotoGP™, and Doraemon. Animoca Brands’ portfolio of blockchain investments and partnerships includes Sky Mavis (Axie Infinity), Dapper Labs (CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shot), OpenSea, Harmony, Bitski, and Alien Worlds. Its subsidiaries include The Sandbox, Quidd, Gamee, nWay, Pixowl, and Lympo. For more information visit www.animocabrands.com
About the International Olympic Committee
The International Olympic Committee is a not-for-profit, civil, non-governmental, international organisation made up of volunteers which is committed to building a better world through sport. It redistributes more than 90 per cent of its income to the wider sporting movement, which means that every day the equivalent of USD 3.4 million goes to help athletes and sports organisations at all levels around the world. For more information, please visit www.olympics.com.
About the Olympic Heritage Collection
The Olympic Heritage Collection is one of the IOC’s three Global Licensing core programmes, and it centres on past Olympic Games, lifestyle and high-end products with limited editions aiming to connect the audience with Olympic history through the art and design of previous editions. The target is Olympic enthusiasts and anyone who would like to own a piece of Olympic history.