Digitization continues to be one of the oldest games in the world as the FIDE International Chess Federation announces its plans to market non-fungible tokens (NFT). The group announced that the market, which will be launched at the end of November, will be called ChessNFT.
FIDE is the first global sports federation to have created its own NFT ecosystem, and will do so ahead of the FIDE World Chess Championship in 2021. The event is scheduled to take place at Expo 2020 Dubai from 24 November to 16 December.
Just last month, world champion Magnus Carlsen won the NFT Cup in the Meltwater Champions Tour. A copy of the trophy was sold to a fan for 6.88 ETH, and the winner also had the opportunity to play with Carlsen.
FIDE dives deeper into the NFT world and said they hope to “embrace the new cryptocurrency demographic” through “manipulation of iconic match moments, unique collectibles, chess-related art” and more.
They have partnered with TON Labs, the lead developer of the FreeTON network, renamed Everscale, to revive the ChessNFT market. NFTs will use a new type of technology called TrueNFT, a product of the Everscale Network. TrueNFT stores physical media on the blockchain itself, instead of just linking to non-functioning content, often hosted elsewhere. The platform interface is also suitable for use with both fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies, depending on the version.
ChessNFT.com joins the rapidly growing list of NFT markets that currently tops Opensea in terms of total settlement volume.
