Chicago Bulls and Shopify team up to launch and support NFTs

• Avinandan Banerjee
• September 27, 2022

Shopify is one of the leading e-commerce platforms in the world where users have the allowance to add storefronts, list their products, sell them and accept payments for that. They have recently started adding Non Fungible Tokens or NFTs on their platform and  introduced a provision where they have allowed the users to sell the cryptocurrencies directly without having to rely on any external marketplace. 

Introducing the Bulls NFT Legacy Collection.

Six NBA Titles.
Six Championship rings.
Six opportunities to own a Bulls NFT Championship ring starting on July 26th.

Get priority access and challenge reward details at https://t.co/WtDafr9rHv pic.twitter.com/xHZFPC7OPv

— Chicago Bulls (@chicagobulls) July 22, 2021

Harley Finklestein, who is the president of Shopify, posted a message on Twitter today and announced about the NFT support that will be provided on Shopify from now onwards. He added that as an example of the first use of the Non Fungible Token technology on the platform by a Shopify partner, they will be showcasing the official NFT drop by Chicago Bulls from the NBA, which had been announced in the previous week by NBA. He also let people know that this provision is available only for a select few partners till now, but at the same time further developments are taking place and requested users to keep an eye out for further updates. 

A Non Fungible Token or an NFT operates on blockchain technology and it serves as a deed of ownership for a digital asset. It enables scarcity for digital collectibles such as digital artworks, photos, video clips, tweets, interactive video game items and many others. The Dapper’s top shot in NBA has been one of the most iconic NFT projects undertaken till date, and the non fungible token has gradually amassed a fortune of around $700 million in trading volume ever since it was launched in fall 2020. Each of the moments featured on the Top Shots is basically an NBA highlight which has been packaged and edited with flourishing taste on animation. It was also released in limited quantities, adding more to its demand.

If you’ve spent 1 minute on the internet this year, you’ve seen a lot about NFTs. @Shopify we are making it easier for our merchants to sell NFTs directly through their stores, with one of the first being the @ChicagoBulls NFT store. https://t.co/Qv2wKO7RCS

— Harley Finkelstein (@harleyf) July 26, 2021

The NFT market has seen an unexpected surge this year beginning from January. The initial quarter of this year witnessed an estimated $1.5 billion worth of money in terms of trading volumes. After traversing through such an incredible surge, there was a period when the market seemed to slow down a little bit. The slump happened during the second quarter of the year when the phenomenal expansion of the market slowed down for a while. However much to everyone’s surprise, according to a report by DappRadar, who basically analyses different decentralised apps and blockchain developments, the non fungible token market had acquired and amassed a fortune of around $2.5 billion by the end of the first half of the year. This amount is a phenomenal indicator of how popular this technology is and how widely people have adopted its usage. Collectors, artists, celebrities, content creators and many others have found incredible uses of this technology and it is pretty much evident that non fungible tokens are going to be widely used in the future and not just in the domain of collectibles and art, but also in other sectors like real estate and others. 

Finklestein added that before Shopify started offering this service, the merchants operating on Shopify would have to sell their products through the medium of a third party marketplace. However this entire process also meant that since there is a third party involved, it would give owners less control over the sale that takes place and also on paying attention to the entire customer experience. But now, with the introduction and application of the support for non fungible tokens, Finklestein firmly believes that this would enable the merchants to get the power back in their hands and they will be able to decide how or when the customers want to contact and buy products from them, thus giving an all-round satisfactory customer experience in all its exclusivity. 

The NFT collection of the Chicago Bulls features digital collectibles that are inspired by the six outstanding victory’s the team had achieved since the year 1990s and each of them are spread out according to multiple levels of rarity. The very first set of NFT was put on sale today and it was sold out fairly quickly. It was inspired by the initial victory of the team back in 1991. Every single NFT has been composed in the form of a lightly made animation video.

The Chicago Bulls NFTs have been minted using the Flow Blockchain, which is owned by the Dapper Labs. Dapper also uses the same for their own NBA Top Shot platform. But Shopify did not limit their NFT support only till Flow.

According to Finklestein, merchants on Shopify can choose between Ethereum and Flow as of now, but the merchants will have other options to choose from and that too, very soon. A company spokesperson told Decrypt that Shopify will be adding new blockchain options for merchants very soon so that they can choose from the options according to their necessities and customer base.