Nike shoe sales on Ethereum blockchain is the next best thing. This time, Ethereum blockchain has made sure that buying Nike shoes becomes a unique experience. Nike and Ethereum have teamed up on the project to assure customers the Nike product they bought is the original one. Above all, they are taking shopping to a next level. Nike will allow customers to groom their own digital shoes, trade with them, design their own pair. Eventually, the project will enable buying the shoes as per your design.
Proving the Provenance and Controlling Scarcity
The future of shopping is here. As of very soon, you would be able to enter the store, buy Nike shoes and check the authenticity of the goods immediately. Or, design your own, unique par. How? The manufacturer has given a short explanation:
“Prospective and current owners […] may buy and sell digital assets through one or more blockchain ledgers operating on the decentralized computing system. […] By way of example, and not limitation, a user may buy a new pair of sneakers from a verified vendor who may provide authenticated provenance records for the sneakers. […] After receiving the shoe box containing the sneakers, the user scans the box UPC with a barcode scan feature in a sneakers app operating on the user’s smartphone.”
The way we understood it, the Etherum tokens will unlock upon the purchase of shoes. The 10-digit shoe id code will link with the owner id code, providing the proof of origin.
Moreover, Ethereum and Nike have gone a step further. Namely, they are working on providing the information on how scarce the item you bought truly is. Also, they will give the buyers a certain level of control regarding the number of the same design shoes items that appear on the market. More precisely, buyers will be able to set limits on the number of the so-called “clone shoes” referring to the design they make themselves. That way, they will be able to have more unique products in their possession.
Furthermore, as if, this hasn’t been enough of improvement, they have added a sparkle of fun to it. Just to spice things up. As per the official explanation, when a consumer buys a genuine pair of shoes, the app generates the digital representation of shoes, links it with the customer and assigns a cryptographic token. Interestingly, the shoe and the cryptographic token collectively represent a ‘CryptoKick.’
All in line with Nike’s motto “Dream Crazier“.
Making Shopping More Entertaining
So, the question remains: what to do with digital shoes? Play! What else?
The patent that Nike acquired (as per U.S. Patent and Trademark Office‘s web site) also allows for breeding of your own digital shoes as well as for making your own digital “offspring”. Although this may sound strange, there are already games on the market that apply the same kind of grooming and collecting of the digital items:
“Using the digital asset, the buyer will be able to securely trade or sell the tangible pair of shoes, trade or sell the digital shoe, store the digital shoe in a cryptocurrency wallet or other digital blockchain locker, intermingle or “breed” the digital shoe with another digital shoe to create “shoe offspring,” and, as per rules of acceptable shoe manufacturability, have the newly bred shoe offspring custom made as a new, tangible pair of shoes.”
As we can see, the buyers will have the opportunity to grant others the right to mix shoe designs. Also, third party will also have the right to parent the digital pair of shoes.
The question we ask today is: Do you think things have gone too far, or you’re up for this kind of change in the shopping experience?