NEW DELHI: FanCraze, a platform for cricket related NFTs (non-fungible tokens), in partnership with International Cricket Council, on Thursday rolled out ICC Crictos – a collection of official and authentic digital collectibles of unforgettable moments from the 2015 and 2019 editions of the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup. A total of 75 key moments of these two World Cups are being converted into NFTs for the launch. Among them are NFTs of cricketers including Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, Kane Williamson, AB De Villiers, Chris Gayle and Kumar Sangakkara, among others.
Additionally, FanCraze has partnered with cricketers such as Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, Andre Russell, Shikhar Dhawan, Jonty Rhodes, Muthiah Muralidaran, Ravichandran Ashwin, and Yuzvendra Chahal, for NFTs over and above its ICC partnership.
Starting 30 January, FanCraze will also make the trading marketplace live on its website. Owning FanCraze NFTs will allow users to build an NFT collection across a particular match or series, trade the NFTs with fans across the globe, get an opportunity to interact with their favourite cricketers or use the NFTs across upcoming apps and play-to-earn games to earn financial rewards in the FanCraze Metaverse.
A release from the company said Crictos are video NFTs from marquee ICC Events, sold via packs that can be subsequently traded on a secondary peer-to-peer marketplace. FanCraze NFTs start at a basic price point of $9 and go up to $249 for more exclusive collections. Fans can buy them through net banking or debit card transactions and not necessarily only via crypto currency.
According to Anshum Bhambri, CEO of FanCraze, “These are the most exciting times for cricket fans. Undoubtedly, fans have catalysed the growth of cricket over the years through their love, emotions, and aspirations. What we are aiming to do through our partnership with the ICC is to empower these very fans to get closer to the game they love than ever before, by collecting, showcasing and trading their very own slices of cricket history.”
FanCraze, which had earlier announced $17.4m seed round funding led by Tiger Global and with participation from Coatue, Sequoia India, and Dapper Labs, among others, has been founded by Wall Street veteran Anshum Bhambri, and Sundar Raman, founding operating chief of the Indian Premier League and former CEO of Reliance Sports, as well as serial entrepreneur Kushagra Kohli.
According to DappRadar, total NFT trading volume in Q3 2021 was approximately $10.7B (up 700% from previous quarter) with an average of 1.5M unique active wallets daily (up 25% from previous quarter). The explosive growth of NFTs continues aided by the popularity of games like Axie Infinity, collections like Cryptopunks and an increasingly more number of artists and brands jumping on the bandwagon, the release from the company said.
