Dear Bankless Nation,
“Power to the players. Power to the creators. Power to the collectors.”
That’s the war cry GameStop’s using to rally interest around its coming NFT project, which the popular game company just announced this week 🎮
Considering GameStop’s position in the gaming world, and frankly on the internet, this NFT project and the ones that could come after it have the potential to win over millions of new users to NFTs.
Alas, let’s explore what we know so far about this intriguing NFT venture in today’s Metaversal!
-WMP
From $GME to NFT
Mainstream investors memetically rallied to GameStop’s $GME stock earlier this year in a big “short squeeze” market event that resulted in major losses for some powerful hedge funds.
The fallout from the episode in TradFi circles led to more than a few r/WallStreetBets investors reaching fever-pitch disillusionment with centralized finance. Some of these investors started diving into Ethereum, DeFi, and NFTs in search of greener, more decentralized pastures.
Well, it’s clear now Gamestop’s leadership went down the Ethereum rabbit hole too, as this week the omnichannel game retailer revealed an upstart blockchain division that’s being headed up by Matt Finestone, who previously led biz operations at Ethereum exchange Loopring.
Finestone and co.’s first project on the slate, then? Details remain vague out of the gate, but the team has confirmed it’s an NFT release of sorts!
Here’s what we know so far about the NFT venture:
- Gamestop has already published an associated GME token smart contract on Ethereum.
- The smart contract, which is inscribed with the phrase “Game On Anon,” is based on OpenZeppelin’s ERC-721 NFT template smart contract.
- The creator of the contract is the GameStop blockchain team’s inaugural Solidity developer, foobar (@0xfoobar on Twitter), who’s previously worked on projects like HD Mooncats and the MooncatHelper and Classic Punks NFT wrapper solutions.
- Citizen smart contract wizzes determined the NFT project’s smart contract has a slated “launch” date of July 14th, 2021, which so happens to be Bastille Day 😯
- Earlybirds trying to send ETH to GME smart contract are getting failed transactions; the contract’s only functionality is to “mint a standalone teaser NFT,” according to foobar.
Changing the Game?
As for what comes next from this NFT project, ultimately we’ll just have to wait and see.
In the meantime, we know from the new GameStop NFT website that the GameStop blockchain team is looking to hire “exceptional engineers (Solidity, React, Python), designers, gamers, marketers, and community leaders,” so in the very least there are clearly bigger things around the corner. That’s good news for the NFT ecosystem in general, since GameStop’s mainstream reach could end up exposing millions of gamers to NFTs for the first time ever.
Action steps
- 👀 Check out the new GameStop NFT site. Interesting, huh? What do you think GameStop should do as part of their coming NFT activities? Let us know in the comments below!