Every November, St. Pete hosts RunFest, the city’s most prestigious race of the year. The event includes a 5k, 10k, and half-marathon over the course of a long weekend. Starting on Friday, hundreds of runners and families pass through the plaza between the Mahaffey Theatre and the Dali Museum to enjoy live music and vendors.
Finding information online has become commonplace for most, but digital ownership often remains a foreign concept, even to digital natives. Out of the hundreds who passed through the plaza, nearly everyone immediately understood how to find the run results; few, however, understood the implication of the RunFest NFT.
Difficulty understanding the power and future of NFTs is excusable: There isn’t yet a common place for people to see and display their digital collectibles. Without an everyday use case, the average person is unlikely to become familiar with such a novel concept. This concept, however, will become far more common in the near future. Cityverse is beginning to facilitate that transition.
Every runner who signed up for the Cityverse waitlist during RunFest is eligible for the RunFest NFT. As soon as the runner signs up for an account, the NFT will be added to their gallery. This NFT, much like a medal, commemorates their accomplishment and reminds them of the windy weekend run in 2022.
Furthermore, the limited nature of these NFTs provides an element of scarcity. As Cityverse develops, the handful of future Cityzens who claimed one of the platform’s first official NFTs will have the chance to sell this collectible from their Homespace. What once had value as a personal memory will gradually gain additional value as a novel piece of history.
Cityverse offers the chance to facilitate this sort of practice throughout the community. Medals for runs, certificates for volunteer work, tickets for local productions, library cards, and more can all exist as NFTs. Cityverse at once allows users to view, display, and trade their NFTs, provides creators and organizations with the tools to issue NFTs, and gives communities the chance to see this all happening within the bounds of their city.
Entertain, for a moment, a thought experiment: Imagine in the future, you attend a race. After you run the 10k, a limited-edition NFT is minted with your name, bib-number and time. Because you signed up for the race using your Cityverse account, the NFT is sent directly to your wallet, ready for display on your Homespace.
After your run, you peruse the nearby vendors. A local artist is giving runners ten per cent off her prints. You open your Cityverse account to show the artist your RunFest NFT and purchase one of the prints at a discount. Attached to the print is a QR code that allows you to claim a limited edition NFT of the print. You immediately add it to your Cityverse NFT Gallery.
When return home, you open Cityverse and see a message from a fellow Cityzen. He notices that you have the last NFT from their favorite artist, and he wants to trade. You decide to keep the print and sell the NFT. A portion of that sale is automatically sent to the artist’s Cityverse account as a royalty payment.
This future is not far off; the technology is already here. As more people get used to interacting in digital spaces like this, platforms like Cityverse are poised to thrive. With the vibrant arts scene and forward-thinking tech community in Tampa Bay, Cityverse is helping herald the revolution in the perfect place.
