A little over a month after Mark Zuckerberg showed the world the metaverse, the so-called "internet evolution", several companies began to generate various businesses around this fruitful digital universe. Nike, for example, recently made official the acquisition of a startup to create the first virtual sneakers.
RTFKT (which pronounced in English means "artifact") specializes in the manufacture of virtual products, particularly sports shoes, and uses the technology of chains of blocks or "blockchain" to guarantee the security and authenticity of purchases .
The company also uses augmented reality and artificial intelligence to develop its products.
"Nike is the only brand in the world that shares our passion for innovation, creativity and community spirit," said Benoît Pagotto, one of the co-founders of RTFKT, in a statement.
"We're looking forward to growing our brand that was created entirely in the metaverse," he said.
"This acquisition is another step that accelerates Nike's digital transformation and allows us to serve athletes and creators at the intersection of sport, creativity, gaming and culture," John Donahoe, President and CEO of NIKE, Inc .
RTFKT was founded in 2020, defining itself as a studio of next-generation sneakers and exclusive collectible products for the metaverse. In fact, they went so far as to sell NFTs worth 3.2 ETH (more than $12,000), with a series of cyberpunk-style sneakers.
After confirming this negotiation, Nike has an important weapon when it comes to competing in the metaverse, being able to both transfer its products to the digital world and have new exclusive collections in it.
In November, the US giant opened "Nikeland" on the Roblox video game platform, a virtual world where players can dress their characters in branded clothing.
Big brands' interest in the metaverse has grown since Facebook announced in late October that it wants to make the metaverse its new business project.
Decentraland is breaking records with new sales, companies like Qualcomm also want their share of the pie through augmented reality hardware, NVIDIA is already proposing its "omniverse" and Apple's future seems to also include the virtual world and augmented reality) .
Taking the next step and building an alternate reality in the “metaverse”: that seems to be the obsession of Mark Zuckerberg and the future of Facebook. The concept, which is not completely clear, implies a kind of digital double of the physical world, accessible through the Internet.
The truth is that "metaverse" is a very broad term: it generally refers to shared virtual world environments that people can access through the Internet. And it can refer to digital spaces that are made more realistic through the use of virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR).
Some people also use the word metaverse to describe certain video games, in which users have a character that can walk around and interact with other players.
Anyway, there is a consensus that thanks to virtual and augmented reality, the metaverse will allow human interactions to multiply, freeing them from physical restrictions through the Internet. Or at least that's what the CEO of one of the most powerful companies in the world has been explaining for a few months.
To put it in concrete terms, for example, it would allow people to dance in a bowling alley with people who are currently thousands of kilometers away, and also buy or sell digital goods or services, many of which have not yet been invented.
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