Tokenizing the world
It seems that you can tokenize just about anything these days, as Florian Ehrbar, the founder of OnChain Labs, explains
Cars, shoes, football scarfs. These are just some of the everyday products that could soon be tokenized and put on the blockchain, according to one expert.
Florian Ehrbar, the founder of OnChain Labs, sat down with Justin Harper to discuss his vision for bringing the power of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to the consumer market.
“We want to be in a space where you're tokenizing physical goods that you can touch, and it's less about the value of the item, it's more about the utility that you're creating by tokenizing the item. So if you're tokenizing a handbag, a shoe, a jacket, a scarf, even a car, you attach values and benefits to the tokenized assets,” he said.
When it comes to the practical uses of a car NFT, if the mileage goes up, then the NFT mileage will go up as well, and possibly its value goes down. The technology for this is still being developed.
“You can even keep it a lot simpler and say, we have a scarf that's from your football club. The scarf is also represented through an NFT, and you connect it with the NFT technology, and now the NFT gives you access to stadiums, gives you access to online content, gives you access to discounts in a store.”
According to Ehrbar, brands have so far used NFTs for PR purposes. Now he wants to add some utility to them. “If you create a way for your community to be part of your brand through owning a part of whatever they want on chain, and then make it tradable, you have a whole different level of engagement.
Supermarket sweep
Now even a supermarket’s loyalty points could be traded or redeemed outside of just the supermarket ecosystem. “Suddenly, the utility of that goes up because you have been a customer for the same supermarket for the last five years, and they have records, seeing that you've been shopping there once a week at least for the last five years.
“Now you get like a superstar NFT, representing that you are this ultra loyal customer. Maybe you want to pass this on to your neighbor, your kids, because this might give you, like, lifelong discount in the supermarket and on chain. You can make this transferable.”
The issue is that for an NFT you need a digital wallet, password and seed phrase which may discourage some customers from signing up. “We realized before we do anything else, we have to build a wallet. So we have a wallet that we built from scratch with web2 experience in mind, but using web3 technology.”
You can access the wallet by logging in with an email and a password, with no add-on or plugin. “You have a wallet with apps, and the apps can be the supermarket loyalty program, your football player transfer investment. It can be a proof of authenticity, because maybe you bought an artwork that you want to verify is true. It can be your car's insurance. The wallet is so important.”
Football transfers
Ehrbar partnered with a company in Switzerland called Crowd Transfer, which is building a platform to finance football players through fan investments. “The idea is that a fan can pitch in 100 bucks and then the club gets enough money from enough fans to buy a player.”
Onchain Labs is creating a wallet for fans to onboard fiat currencies into the wallet to be able to buy a stablecoin. The stablecoin then goes into a smart contract. The club can then withdraw the money from the smart contract, and buy a player. The smart contract is designed so that the money goes straight from the fan to the club.
When you invest, your money goes towards a transfer which is represented on chain through a token. The token in your wallet represents your investment, and the club actually commits to paying you back at the end of the player's contract. At the end of the contract, there are performance metrics that get looked at, and depending on how well they perform, the club pays you back more or less.
“So it's actually a loan the fan gives the club, but based on a performance, your loan return will change. So you might get back 120% or even 200% or maybe 50%.” But that’s sport.
Listen to our full interview with Florian Ehrbar on our live player at The Crypto Radio or in our Thought Leaders podcast.
