Dive Brief:
- Adidas has partnered with Stepn, a move-and-earn app, to introduce a limited-edition, non-fungible token sneaker collection, according to a Monday press release.
- The Stepn x Adidas Genesis Sneakers collection includes 1,000 digital items inspired by Adidas running designs. The NFT collection will be the first of multiple co-branded activities during a one-year partnership between the two companies which will include other NFT drops and physical, wearable items.
- The shoe collection will drop via Stepn’s sister marketplace, Mooar, starting Wednesday via a two-phase raffle. The NFT collection is based on Solana and will be priced in Stepn’s currency of GMT tokens.
Dive Insight:
With its Stepn collaboration, Adidas is diving deeper into NFTs.
In early 2022, Adidas teamed up with Prada to launch an NFT project to promote the Adidas for Prada Re-Nylon collection. Later that year, the athletics brand created a new product category for virtual gear. The company at that time debuted its first NFT digital wearables collection, a 16-piece line featuring limited-edition products from Bored Ape Yacht Club, Gmoney and Punks Comics.
Stepn, launched in 2021 with a goal to incentivize exercise through rewards, said it has amassed 5 million registered users. Its collaboration with Adidas is part of its efforts to grow the “move-to-earn” market, per the press release.
“This collaboration between Stepn and Adidas underscores how powerful it is when you can move and earn in both the virtual and real world simultaneously,” Shiti Manghani, CEO of Stepn by FSL, said in a statement. “That such a physical and digital — or ‘phygital’ — partnership between the most widely used lifestyle app and a global brand like Adidas is now a reality indicates the direction lifestyle rewards are going.”
But as Adidas invests more into NFTs, other retailers have exited the market. Earlier this year, GameStop announced plans to exit its NFT marketplace, citing “the continuing regulatory uncertainty of the crypto space.”
Meanwhile, NFT trading has fallen sharply recently. NFT minting, meaning newly created NFTs, on the Solana blockchain has dropped to roughly 15,000 as of April 15, down from a peak of roughly 350,000 in December 2023, according to The Block. Overall, the NFT market has plunged from its August 2021 peak of $3.24 billion in trading volume to $75.8 million as of the week of April 14, per The Block’s analysis of Cryptoslam data.
