The premier professional mixed martial arts organization, UFC, signed a licensing partnership with Dapper Labs, the company behind crypto kitties. The development goal is to give fans of the UFC an opportunity to purchase, trade, and own UFC-branded digital collectibles.
To do this, Dapper Labs will use its Flow platform which is “built specifically to support consumer-facing blockchain experiences.”
“Flow makes it easy for any developer to build blockchain apps, games, and digital assets to power them,” said Roham Gharegozlou, CEO of Dapper Labs. “Working with the UFC®, we are showing what’s possible when you give an engaged fanbase a real ownership stake in the game they love and the communities they’re a part of.”
Dapper Labs seems to have a focus on sports. Another project their website lists as coming soon is NBA Top Shot which gives “collectible player highlights that you can buy, sell, and use in online games.”
“UFC is thrilled to partner with Dapper Labs to offer a new form of digital collectibles to our global fanbase,” said Tracey Bleczinski, UFC Senior Vice President, Global Consumer Products. “UFC prides itself on being innovators in sports technology, and Flow is another way to provide our fans with the best entertainment experience.”
The collectibles side of blockchain technology is represented as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) meaning that the token is unique and not easily interchangeable. Bitcoin, for example, is fungible since the total supply will be 21 million and they are identical, meaning no bitcoin is any different than another. If person A sent 1 BTC to person B and person B sends 1 BTC to person A, both are in the same position as before. As well, with a fungible token such as bitcoin, you can send parts of a bitcoin (satoshis) to users such as .03 btc. Non-fungible tokens, contrarily, are unique and non-divisible. Each token is representative of something unique and is different than other similar tokens. Think of a baseball card – while the cards are largely similar, they are truly unique as the first Babe Ruth card ever made will be immensely more valuable than a Babe Ruth card made today. And you trade the full card for other cards or assets, you can’t rip half of the card off to sell half of the value.
Collectibles in the form of NFT’s are the future generations’ way to collect and trade assets in the digital age. UFC fans will be among the first to access this new-age way of collecting or trading unique assets online.
For early access, you can register on the official UFC / Dapper Labs website.
Sources