NIKE’s Decision To Go ‘Crypto’ Will Benefit Ethereum More Than The Shoemaker

NIKE ‘s latest filing with the US Patent Association is making the round of the web this time of the year, even if the filling was approved earlier this May, while the initial commitment took place roughly a year ago, in December 2018.

The 25-paragraph filling explains in detail all the possible ways the US Shoemaker plans to use distributed ledger technology to offer unique digital products that may be also tethered to physical products and vise versa.

More specifically, NIKE reveals that the platform of choice to work on something like that would be the Ethereum blockchain, due to the fact some EIPs (Ethereum Improvement Proposals) including ERC-721 Non-Fungible Tokens, and the ERC-1155 Multi Token Standard are already some advanced established blockchain-powered protocols that would allow such a tokenization of unique physical and digital shoes and apparel.













In some embodiments, (the) purchase of an authentic, tangible pair of shoes may enable or “unlock” a corresponding cryptographic digital asset and a digital shoe associated with that digital asset. For example, when a person purchases a real-world pair of shoes from a registered seller, a unique (e.g., 10-bit numeric) physical shoe identification (ID) code of the physical shoes may be linked to a unique (e.g., 42-bit alphanumeric) owner ID code of the buyer.

To demonstrate how this works in detail, you can read our article regarding the booming crypto-art community which utilizes the same Ethereum protocols to empower a marketplace of unique digital art pieces on the blockchain.

The key element of this process would be definitely the ERC-721 Non-Fungible Token EIP, which is basically a deed system on the Ethereum blockchain that enables ownership of physical or digital goods, as well as the re-distribution or re-sell of the smart-contract that owns the respective product.

NIKE is not a newcomer when it comes to cutting edge marketing, and they already see the vast potential in metaverse markets such as videogames, VR worlds, and crypto-collectibles.

Furthermore, in order to promote brand engagement and the use of digital NIKE products, the company wants to create unique use-cases that would allow netizens to engage, control, and link their digital goods to physical NIKE products.

With the proliferation of first and third-person video games involving customizable skins, apparel, and gear, there exists an opportunity to engage and influence users in the digital realm via collectible objects so that they may be more engaged with a brand in the physical world. Likewise, there exists a need for a retailer to more directly influence and/or control the nature and ultimate supply of digital objects within this virtual market.

This could be easily one of the most historic events in the blockchain industry, as not another X financial institution or banking giant utilizes blockchain to make more money, but one of the largest apparel enterprises on the globe found a way to enter the digital market with their own unique use-case.

As for Ethereum, this could only be translated to more customers and more transactions on a mass-scale, and whether NIKE’s digital consumers will be aware of what Ethereum is or how much it costs, or even how to buy it, the shoemaking giant makes sure that the experience will be as smooth as possible, regardless of people’s realization about the app or the products running on the blockchain.