Nike has acquired RTFKT (pronounced “artifact”), which the sportwear giant describes in its press release as delivering “next generation collectibles that merge culture and gaming.” The terms of the deal will not be disclosed, said NIke.
Founded as a company as recently as January 2020 – by Benoit Pagotto, Chris Le and Steven Vasilev – RTKFT was born in London out of the lockdowns and “on the metaverse.” By its own account, however, it existed “for many years” before then as an “undefined collective, working strictly in the shadows, providing designs and concepts to game companies and a few select fashion brands.” The purpose of the subsequent incorporation, it states, was to expand the collective’s services “into the public metamarket.” The same statement denies rumors that RTKFT uses a rogue artifical intelligence, stolen from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, to perform its work. “There has been absolutely no evidence or legal action to justify these rumours,” the statement says.
What the company does, again by its own account, is use “the latest in game engines, NFT, blockchain authentication and augmented reality […] to create one of a kind sneakers and digital artifacts.” Specifically, RTKFT uses the Ethereum and accepts payment in that blockchain’s native cryptocurrency, Ether.
Nike’s president and CEO, John Donahoe, calls the acquisition “another step that accelerates Nike’s digital transformation […] at the intersection of sport, creativity, gaming and culture.” The plan is to “invest in the RTFKT brand […] and extend Nike’s digital footprint and capabilities.”
Nike has made a number of moves in the direction of blockchain and virtual worlds over the past two years. Late in 2019 it received a patent for CryptoKicks (“kicks” being slang for shoes), a way to frustrate digital counterfeiting by using blockchain’s multiple ledgers and “hashing” to link digital footwear or apparel uniquely to single users. As the patent relates, “a digital representation of a shoe may be generated, linked with the consumer, and assigned a cryptographic token, where the digital shoe and cryptographic token collectively represent a ‘CryptoKick’. The digital representation may include a computer-generated avatar of the shoe or a limited-edition artist rendition of the shoe.”
Nike has filed applications for other, related patents this year and, most recently, launched its Nikeland digital world on the Roblox gaming platform.
The company’s German rival Adidas has been making similar moves, striking a partnership with the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and launching a virtual world of its own on another gaming platform, The Sandbox, which itself runs on the Ethereum blockchain, just like RTFKT.
