Inspired by user interfaces, designed for the global Solana community.
While Nike appears to be building its own Web3 platform with .SWOOSH, ASCIS is leaning heavily on the Solana blockchain. A year ago, ASICS dropped the Sunrise NFT Collection on OpenSea and the release appeared to be underwhelming:
In recent reports on the success of NFT marketplaces, Nike leads the way and ASICS didn’t register in the reports. This doesn’t mean the company is tossing NFTs to the media. They appear to be doubling down to create a Web3 Community. Nike created a blog for longform content and a landing page for .SWOOSH. ASICS has moved ahead of Nike in launching their second NFT Collection. It is the first with Solana as the blockchain of choice, but ASICS was able to create this project and do a drop from November 4th to the 8th.
POSITIVES
The ASICS x Solana drop was a pre-order only. The physical products won’t be shipped until March 23rd. Why is this a positive? ASICS will build the sneakers to order. This limits excess product. While a five-month wait isn’t ideal, it is a better method of releasing sneakers as the final product ships directly from manufacturer to end user. This removes warehousing, shipping containers and offloading and shipping to warehouses. The amount of carbon dioxide reduced during this process is considerable, especially when you consider that any questions of authenticity are also removed by purchasing a product backed by an NFT. One of the biggest concerns I’ve had since studying NFTs is the amount of power it took to mint and mine for every purchase. Unlike ASICS Red NFT drop, their move to Solana Proof of Stake vs. Proof of Work — Solana’s Environmental Impact | by nova | Medium, is a switch to Proof of Stake and a newer form of mining crypto, Proof of History. According to a recent report, found in the link above, Solana is the “greenest” form of mining.
NEGATIVES
ASICS has been making gigantic strides in becoming a more eco-conscious company. Unfortunately, Proof of History and Stake still require considerable amount of power consumption and if the goal is to remove the need for verifying authenticity, an NFC chip could handle the workload. Web3 isn’t moving along as quickly as brands want, especially after the massive amount of investment companies have placed into the various down during the quarantine. For ASICS there work in venture capital has taken place with their ASICS Accelerator. Like Nike, there isn’t a definitive number which can be placed on how much these companies have spent on Web3 based technologies, but after touting their GEL-LYTE™ III CM 1.95, which releases next year pushing forward into Web3 should arrive with a media eye and skepticism unless ASICS explains how they are offsetting the CO2 being created by the blockchain for this release.
In the last few months tech companies have laid off countless workers. Facebook/Meta has quietly cut eleven thousand employees. As the company dives deeper into Web3 development, the share price is falling and confidence in the platform’s business model is diminishing. Could both Nike and ASICS be in a similar position once the books are balanced, and they find that Web3, including NFTS, has created a no-win situation as people begin to get back out into the world post Covid? Are both companies “doubling down” to show belief in their investments, or are they hoping that these pushes ASICS Atmos x Sneaker Freaker?