William Shatner, most famously known for his role as Captain Kirk in the historic Star Trek series, has entered into a partnership with WAX to sell exclusive photographs of his life on the blockchain.
Shatner will release the photos as a set of tradable digital cards, highlighting some of his most memorable life moments from the 1930s onwards. "Putting something on the blockchain is forever", Shatner said in his interview with Cointelegraph. He acknowledged the unique power blockchain has to verify that a digital item is in fact an original and not counterfeit.
Based on Block One's EOSIO technology, the WAX (Worldwide Asset eXchange) blockchain has been specifically designed to support the peer-to-peer trading of unique digital items such as trading cards, avatars, and weapon skins. Digital item trading has already become popular on the Ethereum blockchain, but complicated wallet software, long confirmation times, and gas fees have been a turn off for less technical users.
In order to start trading digital items on the WAX blockchain, a crypto wallet such as Metamask or Scatter is not required. Rather, users can use one of their existing social media accounts to setup a "WAX Cloud Wallet" from the company's website. WAX then acts as a trusted custodian of the user's private key until they wish to transfer ownership of their items to an account under their own control.
The WAX blockchain is capable of processing hundreds of transactions per second, which significantly enhances the user experience. New users are also allocated blockchain resources when they create an account so that trading can occur without gas fees.
Following the release of Topp's Garbage Pail Kids trading cards in May, where the entire batch sold out in less than 30 hours, there is speculation as to whether Shatner's cards will sell out just as fast. Some Garbage Pail Kids cards have seen up to 25x returns in the secondary market.
Other collectibles set for release on the WAX blockchain include the gothic-themed "Dark Country" card game and "Blockchain Heroes", which will feature iconic members of the crypto industry.
The WAX team is lead by William Quigley, the serial entrepreneur behind the first stablecoin Tether and CEO of OPskins, an online marketplace for trading weapon skins. He is also the face of WAX's YouTube channel where he often discusses economic theories behind the value of cryptocurrencies.
The release date of Shatner's cards is yet to be announced, but you can follow WAX and Shatner on Twitter to stay in the loop.
Sources:
https://www.blockchaingamer.biz/news/14109/garbage-pail-kids-collectible-cards-wax/
https://wax.io/blog/william-shatner-is-coming-to-the-wax-blockchain-get-digital-memorabilia-from-star-treks-captain-kirk-as-nfts-on-wax
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/06/11/2046965/0/en/Blockchain-Heroes-Collectible-Digital-Trading-Card-Set-to-Feature-50-Original-Superheroes-on-WAX-Blockchain.html
https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/2020/06/24/william-shatner-nft-wax-blockchain
https://www.sherwoodcopy.com/trading-cards/