VerifiedInk is now open to athletes, fans and collectors and we want everyone in our growing community to know what to expect. This post covers all of the basics and outlines some of our current plans. Our goal is to build the most engaging digital collectible ecosystem for athletes and their fans. While we build with a very specific direction and concrete deliverables, we always listen to our community. In that spirit, we can’t guarantee you that everything will unfold as exactly planned below, but we can guarantee that every decision we make is in service of the goal above, putting athletes and fans first.
Everyone at VerifiedInk grew up both playing and watching sports, and most of us grew up collecting cards. Collectibles to us are a tangible representation of something even more special - the connection between a fan and athlete. At VerifiedInk we strive to honor that connection by removing all intermediaries between our athletes and their fans, resulting in a pure, unique and engaging product. Over time, we’ll be adding more capabilities to further strengthen that bond.
So what sets VerifiedInk apart?
Athlete Created
Our athletes design their own NFTs. They choose their picture, their video, their colors and their signature. We leave it completely up to the athlete and, as you can see when scrolling through our marketplace, their personality shines through. No other collectible platform enables athletes to share their personality like VerifiedInk.
Athlete Owned
Athletes own the NFTs they sell on our platform and between 70% to 95% of all sales go directly to our athletes. Nothing in sports or entertainment comes close to this revenue share. Typically, even for professional athletes, athletes receive somewhere between 2-20% of sales. The best agreements we’ve seen from other digital collectible companies might hit 50%.
Early Access to Pre-Pro Talent
Fans and Collectors can now show their support and belief in athletes when they’re still in high school or college. This is also the time when many athletes most need your support, and where a little bit of funding goes a long way.
You can also benefit from taking that early risk when one of your VerifiedInk athletes makes it to the league. You could own the VerifiedInk NFT designed by the next Rookie of the Year or MVP when he or she was playing high school ball.
Social Media Connections
Certain athletes have enabled social media upgrades on their VerifiedInk NFTs. When you buy or pull one of those NFTs, and provide your Twitter or Instagram handle, our athlete will actually follow you!
Predictable + Controlled Supply
Your VerifiedInk NFT collection represents the strength of your connection to our athletes and we want that strength to be predictable and long-lasting. As such, we are always very clear about rarity, supply and any other platform changes that could impact your collection’s value.
Physicals!
We know we’re a digital collectible platform, but we’re fans and collectors in real life. We’ve brought the best of both worlds together with Augmented Reality (AR) physical cards. You can see a video of one in action below. Some initial sales will include a VerifiedInk AR physical, and we will have packs on sale later this summer.
We’re very excited by our initial product which focuses on the connection between fans and athletes, and we think you will be too. Next, we’ll get into some of the details of our economics and utility so you know what to expect when buying your first VerifiedInk.
Economics
As collectors, we believe that predictability and clarity are the foundation of any collectable platform. Over the past 20 years we’ve watched the traditional trading card market explode and over the past 20 months we’ve seen even more rapid growth and innovation in the NFT collectible space. We’re learning from the successes and mistakes of platforms that came before us in designing the blueprint for VerifiedInk’s ecosystem.
This is our plan for our first full year. We’re balancing many priorities, but think that the net result is a platform everyone will be excited to join.
Years
Each VerifiedInk release is tied to a scholastic year and resets on Sept 1st. The first partial year was 2022, and our first fully year is 2023 (starting on Sept 1, 2022). All athletes are able to release at least one edition per sport per year.
Editions
We will have a limited number of editions possible each year. We’re starting with just a few, but will likely expand in the second half of ‘23. Not all athletes will be able to mint all editions, they’ll need to hit certain sales or ranking goals to enable larger or special editions.
Launch - 10
The very first edition that each athlete creates is considered their Launch Edition. Every athlete can create a single launch edition consisting of 10 total NFTs. Each NFT in the launch edition is identical in rarity and appearance, the only difference is the serial number.
Base - 10
After their Launch edition, for each year and sport every athlete can create a base edition. Just like the launch edition, there will be a total size of 10 NFTs that are all identical in rarity and appearance.
Extended - 50-1000
When athletes hit certain sales goals they’ll unlock their ability to mint an extended edition of their Launch or Base Edition. Depending on VerifiedInk’s estimate of total demand, Extended Editions can vary in size from 50-1000. Extended Editions are not all uniform, and contain NFTs with different rarities and upgrades (covered below). When an athlete releases an Extended Edition, the Base/Launch Edition will be automatically upgraded (in rarity / appearance) - more on that below.
Future Editions - 1/1, Signing, Special Editions
In the future, for athletes that have unlocked their Extended Edition, we will provide outlets to release additional editions, covering different themes, moments or rarity levels. We will always ensure rarity levels are consistent for an athlete across their editions and will keep the edition sprawl controlled enough to make it fun and engaging, without requiring a PhD in VerifiedInk-onomics.
Rarity
We’re adopting a similar rarity tiering process to other collectible platforms, primarily because it works and it’s familiar to you all. As expected, relative size is the key differentiator between rarities, but appearance and Utility also increase with the higher rarity tiers.
Common
This is the most common rarity on the platform. In general ~80% of the supply for a given athlete will be common. All Launch and Base Editions will start as common. If an Extended Edition is created for the athlete, the Launch/Base Edition will be dynamically upgraded to a higher rarity level.
Rare
About 10-15% of the supply for an in-demand athlete will be rare. We’ll get to utility in the next section, but Rare NFTs will always have upgraded graphics and utility compared to Common for a given Edition.
Legendary
This is the top rarity tier and consists of ~2-5% of the total supply for a given athlete. These NFTs have even more significant upgrades to graphics and utilities (outlined in the next section). Since VerifiedInk total supply numbers are orders of magnitude smaller than most other collectible NFT platforms, these NFTs are truly distinguished from the rest of the pack.
Utility
We think that enabling fans to own an early-career collectible designed by your favorite athlete and sold on a platform that returns more than 90% of revenues to those athletes is a great baseline for our utility. But if we stopped there, we wouldn’t be doing as much as we can to achieve our goal above. We’ve mentioned some of the utility we’re rolling out, and we do have more planned which isn’t included below, but this gives you a sense of where we’re headed.
Athlete Created - You’re buying an NFT designed by the athlete themselves.
Athlete Owned - Athletes own the NFTs they sell on our platform and receive the vast majority (90%+) of the revenue from primary sales. Athletes also receive a 4% royalty on all secondary sales.
Physical Cards - Certain NFTs include VerifiedInk AR physicals so you can interact with your NFT in real life. All NFTs are compatible with the VerifiedInk physical which will go on sale later this summer.
Twitter/Insta Follows/Shoutouts - Certain NFTs include a follow or shoutout by the athlete.
Zoom/FaceTime - Certain NFTs include a Zoom/FaceTime with the athlete.
Airdrops - Certain NFTs include free airdrops of Extended Editions.
Auto-Upgrades - Launch and Base NFTs will automatically be upgraded upon creation of any Extended Edition.
Upgraded Graphics - Certain NFTs have additional graphical, animation and photo upgrades to reflect their relative rarity.
Future - Challenges - All NFTs will be included in platform-wide or team-specific challenges. Collecting NFTs included in a challenge will either enable holders to receive special edition drops or other incentives for completing challenges.
Future - Redemptions - We’ll be enabling redemptions in the coming months for athletes to include various one time-use utilities through their NFTs. These could include items like sponsored Twitter or Instagram posts.
Future - Discord Access - We’ll be experimenting with Discord access to athletes for holders including athlete and team specific channels.
Future - Reduction - We’ll be experimenting with avenues to reduce or trade-in NFTs in return for exclusive access to drops or other rewards.
Purchases + Sales
So you’ve read enough about VerifiedInk, you know where we’re headed, and you want in. How do you start?
Expand this block for details on Payment Types, our Marketplace, Auctions, Drops and Packs.
Payment Types
We accept all major Credit Cards or Crypto (Solana) to buy VerifiedInk NFTs on sale through our website. We’ve made the process of buying and owning NFTs as simple and safe as buying anything on Amazon, you just need an email address and a credit card.
Marketplace
Our marketplace is open for business! There you can buy directly from athletes or other collectors at prices they have set. Over the next few months we will be adding additional meta-data to the interface so you can search by star-ranking and college prospects.
If you buy through our platform with a credit card, you can also sell for a fixed price from your Collection page. Payouts on the marketplace are handled through stripe (paid out to a debit card) or through a Solana wallet (paid out in USDC). We have a minimum withdrawal limit to start, but plan to lower or eliminate it over time. There are no marketplace fees if you sell on the VerifiedInk marketplace. If you purchase via crypto or transfer your NFT to your own wallet, you can then buy or sell that NFT on OpenSea or any other Solana NFT marketplace. A 10% royalty is applied to every secondary sale regardless of marketplace, 4% going to the athlete and 6% to VerifiedInk.
Auctions
For certain athletes we hold auctions where you can bid to win one of their NFTs. For now Auctions are credit card only, though we have plans to enable both crypto and credit cards in the future.
Drops
For the most in-demand athletes we hold specific drops. We generally will escalate the price as the drop progresses AND mix different rarities into the sale, giving you a chance to pull a rare or legendary version of the NFT Edition you purchase. Additionally, we randomize serial numbers for drops providing another opportunity for you to pull a more valuable NFT at the drop price. At times, the drop will immediately show you what rarity you received, other times we will have a week or so delay before the rarity is revealed and the winning NFTs are upgraded.
Future - Packs
We will be enabling purchases of Packs in the near future. Packs are composed of 3 NFTs from the VerifiedInk platform with mixed rarities. We plan to have various sports, school and conference themed packs so you can quickly grow a collection that represents your fandom.
Wrap-up
We’re excited to have you join our community and mission in building the most engaging digital collectible ecosystem for athletes and their fans. We hope you’re as excited as us and we’d love to hear from you directly. You can reach us at feedback@verifiedink.us, @VfdInk on any social media platform or by clicking the blue button at the bottom of our website.
Footnotes
All Social Media related utility is ultimately up to the athlete’s discretion. Of course, VerifiedInk will limit future participation in the platform by any athletes that do not honor their commitments. The athlete also reserves the right to not honor social media utility if the redeemer requests support of a cause or group that the athlete does not want to support.
Certain uses will be transferrable, others will not. The NFT will clearly indicate if the usage is transferrable or single-use.
Some High School athletic governance boards prohibit their HS athletes from profiting from their Name, Image and Likeness (NIL). While we allow these athletes to create their collectibles, we do not permit HS athletes from those states to sell their NFTs on VerifiedInk until they have finished their senior season.
All athletes on our platform certify that they own the rights to post photographs and video on their NFTs in the same way they do on any Social Media platform. If you believe that an athlete does not have those rights, please contact us at support@verifiedink.us.
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