The wear-to-earn economy introduces the world to a new industry for gamified fashion, incentivizing creative expression in the metaverse.
A digital space known as the metaverse is leading a new reality, where virtual items exist in gamified or parallel worlds online. Here, participants may work, socialize, own property and exchange items that exist in a world constructed on the blockchain. As companies continue to invest heavily in this space, brands must learn how to navigate this new frontier and determine their place in the digital world.
With growing interest in the metaverse and nonfungible tokens (NFTs), Space Runners is working to alleviate some of the unknowns in this transition. Space Runners is a metaverse fashion brand aimed to create interoperable fashion items for the metaverse and to build a space where fashion can be gamified for the first time.
By collaborating with different artists, celebrities and brands, the project is providing a foundation to meet the world where they are, supporting traditional businesses as they grow into the Fashion Metaverse landscape. By doing so, Space Runners’ goal is to become the largest fashion item provider across the metaverse and games regardless of their engines and blockchain.
“In the metaverse, we see fashion as an indispensable part of digital identity, self-expression and virtual culture. Away from the limits, open to interaction and innovation, fashion will be much more important for the metaverse than it is in the physical world,” Deniz Ozgur, co-founder of Space Runners, shares.
Building a Fashion Metaverse
The leading metaverse fashion brand also announced a $10 million financing round, co-led by Polychain, Pantera Capital, Accel, Jump Capital and other participants, including Yat Siu, co-founder and Chairman of Animoca Brands, and Justin Kan co-founder of Twitch and Fractal.
Space Runners’ first launch was an NFT sneaker collection in partnership with NBA Champions Kyle Kuzma and Nick Young. These limited edition assets are designed to be wearable in the metaverse, unlocking traits, including speed and power. In addition to leading a revolution in how the world views fashion, each Space Runner NFT unlocked the opportunity to interact with athletes through exclusive events, weekly courtside seats in basketball games and other backstage events. These perks are in addition to member-only benefits, including unlimited access to Solana (SOL) API services.
The release, which took place in December 2021, consisted of 10,000 NFTs sold out in just nine minutes. Space Runners has since sparked the growth of the biggest Solana NFT community, made up of 500,000 members across Discord, Twitter and Instagram.
Foreshadowing an industry-wide transition to come, this initial collection demonstrated how fashion items could be designed as NFTs that are later plugged into any metaverse or game. Creators and artists would then be given a chance to take advantage of augmented reality (AR) and social media filters to allow their NFT holders to interact with Space Runner assets outside of the metaverse, in a place where digital and real worlds collide.
All efforts would then culminate in a metaverse game set to launch in 2022, setting a new era for fashion.
Into the metaverse and beyond
Leveraging the $10 million received through financing, Space Runners is targeted to expand its two primary business lines – fashion items and the fashion metaverse.
For its fashion items, the Space Runners team is taking necessary steps towards becoming the largest supplier of interoperable fashion items across NFT games and the greater metaverse. In parallel, their initiative towards developing a fashion metaverse will gamify the industry with a concept known as “wear-to-earn.” Under this model, participants will be incentivized and rewarded for their fashion-forward thinking in the digital realm.
Source: Cointelegraph.com
