Nifty Football Launches Ethereum-based Trading Card Marketplace

The tinkerers behind BlockCities, CryptoKaiju, and KnownOrigin have launched another Non-Fungible Token (NFT) project called Nifty Football. The marketplace offers users a chance to buy and trade assorted Ethereum-based collectibles of football players. The illustrations on each card were created by famed artist Stanley Chow, well-known for his football-inspired prints of Eric Cantona, Messi and many others.

Sports, Art, and Ethereum

While blockchain technology attempts to rewrite how we think of databases and overturn high finance, a number of entrepreneurs are looking turning to other niche markets. Since launching Blockrocket, a crypto-centric consulting firm, co-founder Andy Gray has also been rewriting how the industry thinks of collectibles.

For the uninitiated, one of blockchain technology’s most potent propositions has been its ability to render digital items scarce. At current, songs can be copied, shared, and re-copied thousands of times over. This also goes for films, photos, and any other bit of information users decide to share on the Internet. The advent of Bitcoin in 2009 has since offered an alternative.

Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency, cannot be copied or falsified meaning that there is only 21 million bitcoin that will ever be in circulation. The bitcoin that one person holds in their wallet are non-replicable. Applying this principle to the world of art and gaming also shows extreme promise.

The first real use case for making Internet art scarce was the viral CryptoKitties sensation. At its peak, some variations of the collectibles were being bought and sold for over $100,000. The mania reached a pitch when the marketplace for the digital felines eventually brought the Ethereum blockchain to a near halt.

Like the Nifty Football trading cards, CryptoKitties are also based on the ERC721 token model, otherwise known as Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).

Since then, the experimentation with this token has seen a number of different applications. Legacy art enterprises are leveraging the technology to sell off partitions of Andy Warhol paintings, while the folks at CryptoKaiju, another of Blockrocket’s creations, are offering unique physical toys connected to the Ethereum blockchain.

In the world of sports, crypto technologies also offer a slightly new marketing approach between clubs and fans. Socios, a tokenized voting platform, has been signing clubs like West Ham United from England, Juventus from Italy, and even Paris Saint Germain in France to explore how supporters can have more an impact on club events.

The One of a Kind Work of Stanley Chow

To add a finer touch to Blockrocket’s most recent crypto-collectibles launch, the Nifty FC team brought on illustrator Stanley Chow. The Manchester-based artist helped to design each of the aesthetic properties of the myriad combinations of trading cards.

To get a better idea of how the platform worked, BTCManager bought a few packs to play around with.

At the time of writing, the Danilo Campos card is actually one of the top 50 cards on the platform. The above collection also underlines the wide variety of colors, styles, and countries with which the cards can be mixed and matched.

As first indicated in a pre-launch Medium post, Andy Gray explained that the first 1,000 cards would be considered the “genesis” edition and revealed that some “kits, colours, and ethnicities will be retired over the coming weeks.” Outside of physical characteristics, each character is also imbued with four other qualities: Strength, skill, speed, and intelligence.

The team behind Nifty Football has developed a knack for finding fruitful use cases in the crypto collectible space. Speaking on their progression, Gray said that “After building crypto-collectibles for the last eighteen months we have become obsessed with how digital assets will change the world.”

In the next coming months, cardholders and their teams will also be able to compete against one another in the inaugural “Nifty Football BrewDog Founder’s Cup,” to sponsor “the timeless combination of beer and football in the crypto world.”

For more granular information on how the marketplace is developing, interested parties can head over to OpenSea to learn more about the spread of characteristics, top bids, and how much the top-ranked player is worth in ether (ETH).