The Italian luxury sports car manufacturer Ferrari initiated a long-term partnership with blockchain company Velas in early 2022. In addition to developing an NFT marketplace for Ferrari, Velas is also a partner of Scuderia Ferrari, the company’s racing division and the team that participates in Formula One.
The partnership is based on the expanding use of NFTs in the sports industry. According to a report by Deloitte Global, the sector is anticipated to generate more than US$2 billion in transactions in 2022.
Ferrari NFTs: what we currently know about them.
The precise specifications of the Ferrari NFT marketplace and collections are still a mystery. Velas did, however, mention in a medium article that Ferrari fans will have the opportunity to communicate with their favorite race car drivers and also receive rewards in exchange for holding Ferrari NFTs, most likely in a metaverse-like setting.
The official Twitter account of Velas, which focuses primarily on motorsports, Velas Motorsport, also shares hints about the upcoming NFTs’ role in the metaverse and their potential for fan engagement. These include optimizing the race analytics, granting access to previously-attended event replays, rewarding NFT holders with IRL benefits like on-site sitting places, and using NFTs as sports memorabilia. There’ll also be NFT tickets for live sports events redeemable for after-event extras like merchandise.
As an intriguing use case of NFTs in the world of motorsport, certifying car parts was also mentioned. Since blockchain technology enables transparent transactions, it’s possible to monitor and audit factory parts with confidence.
Ferrari Velas Esports Series
Velas is also the official partner of the Ferrari Esports Series, a virtual motorsport championship. All races stream on Ferrari’s Twitch channel. For instance, on September 6, the European Qualification Race was broadcast, where the Italian F4 Championship driver Maya Weug shared her insights on real and virtual motorsport competitions. The North American qualification race was on show on September 7, featuring the Formula Regional European Championship leader Dino Beganovic.
The Grand Final will be broadcast on October 2.
NFTs and Formula One
It bears underlining that NFT is an important theme that receives a lot of attention in the Formula One community, in part because NFTs are contemporary sports collectibles with significant potential to reach a young, digital-savvy audience.
The trademark department of the number car racing organization filed patents in August 2022 relating to NFTs and metaverse. The intention is to offer a broad range of products and services as NFTs during the Las Vegas Grand Prix event, which will take place in November 2023.
About Velas blockchain
Velas was established in 2019 and is headquartered in Switzerland. It’s an open-source blockchain ecosystem that is backed by the Solana network. More specifically, it’s a hybrid chain of Solana and Ethereum Virtual Machines. This combination makes it possible to use Solidity to develop apps on the Ethereum blockchain while reducing transaction costs. As a result, Velas blockchain has the capacity to process up to 50,000+ transactions per second and has fees as low as 0,00001$. The native cryptocurrency of Velas is VLX which has a 2.36B circulating supply.
As a blockchain that uses dPOS as a consensus algorithm, a variation of proof-of-stake that consumes less energy, Velas is also an environmentally friendly, carbon-neutral blockchain.
In order to support the development of the Velas ecosystem in web3, the company runs a $100 million grants program.
Velas and NFTs
Velas is building a native NFT marketplace, known as GPNFTs, which will be a dedicated marketplace for motorsports-related NFTs.
The company also supports other NFT initiatives through its grants program mentioned above. These include MetaOcean, Velas blockchain-powered NFT marketplace, BitOrbit App, which features an NFT bazaar with advanced marketing tools, and Warlands, a real-time battle metaverse.
