cryptovibes.com
Basketball legend and former NBA star Metta Sandiford-Artest, popularly known as Metta World Peace, is launching an NFT collection on the Solana blockchain. The NFT collection is dubbed “Metta Designsoles”, and it will be launched in partnership with Blanksoles, a decentralized sneaker company.
Metta World Peace NFT
The co-founder of Blanksoles, Raymond Dong, noted that the objective of this NFT is “to have the sneaker to be a blank canvas for expression for partners in our network.” The NFT collection will be a limited edition, and it will be launched on Solana.
The collection will involve 450 Metta Designsoles, each having unique attributes. This will be available during the minting process from March 14 to March 20. Those who redeem Designsoles tokens will unlock an exclusive physical pair of Metta Designsoles created by Marc Scepi, a shoe and NFT designer.
Dong noted that those who purchase these NFTs would receive their physical shoes after a month. The first collection will only include 450 items, but if it receives overwhelming demand, the company could create more during the next collection.
Sandiford-Artest commented on this initiative, saying, “When I had the opportunity to do Blanksoles, I’m like, ‘Wow, I always wanted my own shoe.’” He also noted that he had chosen Blanksoles for allowing the personalization of the NFT sneakers. “This is why I’m a big fan of Blanksoles. I think more athletes should take advantage of what’s happening right now,” he added.
Blanksoles is a project built on the Solana blockchain. The project deals in physical apparel, and it operates in both the physical world and the virtual one.
“Solana has been great partners to us from the beginning. They’re the biggest basketball fans and one of the fastest-growing blockchains for basketball players for NFTs out there,” Dong said.
Basketball stars and Solana
Sandiford-Artest is not the only NBA champion developing NFTs. Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal are venturing towards the Solana ecosystem. O’Neal has even added a .Sol domain on his Twitter profile.
Jordan was also involved in a $46 million funding for Metaplex, a Solana NFT platform. Other investors involved in the funding included Solana Ventures, Multicoin Capital and Jump Crypto.