US esports team 100 Thieves has launched a distribution of free non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to be picked up on their site via the Polygon sidechain (MATIC). The NFT will represent the diamond chain offered to the team’s players upon winning the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) tournament in 2021.
100 Thieves releases NFTs on Polygon (MATIC)
Esports continues to move into the world of blockchain. This time, it’s the North American team 100 Thieves that released 300,000 non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Polygon (MATIC) sidechain to thank its fans for their support.
However, the word “NFT” has still not been mentioned in the team’s various announcements. Indeed, they prefer to talk about “digital commemorative gifts”.
A championship isn’t just for our players to celebrate.
You believed in us.
You cheered alongside us.
We have a special gift for you.A commemorative digital 100 Thieves championship chain. Available now for free for everyone.
Claim: https://t.co/JlKpzrHMnH pic.twitter.com/oOBbfObUIy
– 100 Thieves (@100Thieves) February 2, 2022
100 Thieves insists that the rewards will be completely free, and that there will not even be a need to pay a transaction fee to collect an NFT and send it to your digital wallet. To do this, it is already possible to connect your MetaMask wallet to the site or to use WalletConnect.
The NFTs are all identical and represent the diamond chain distributed by 100 Thieves CEO Matt “NadeShot” Haag to the players on his team that won the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) last year. The LCS is the largest tournament of the popular game League of Legends in North America and has been sponsored by trading platform FTX since last year.
Are these real gifts or a strategic asset?
Although the 100 Thieves Twitter announcement carefully avoids the divisive term NFT, their website does state that they are NFTs, but makes it clear that they are not designed to generate speculation:
NFTs are best known as simple images sold at exorbitant prices. But NFTs are just a technology, like websites or emails. We use non-fungible tokens to distribute collectibles to our fans, but we don’t sell anything, they’re not for resale, we don’t make any money from it. “
Also on their website, 100 Thieves takes the lead on the ecological impact of NFTs, something that is often argued against them:
We specifically use an infrastructure (Polygon) that has a lower environmental impact compared to other NFTs. The carbon footprint required to claim this NFT is roughly equivalent to sending 2.5 emails. “
Thus, one might think that beyond wanting to reward its fans, the esport team is also trying to take the temperature within its community towards NFTs by taking care to answer the usual arguments that are opposed to them.
Moreover, Matt Haag, the team’s CEO, does not hide his interest in NFTs as he owns a few on the OpenSea platform and also displays a CryptoPunk in his profile picture on the Twitter network.
So it remains to be seen if we will see a new collection of NFTs for the American 100 Thieves team, but for a fee this time.
