The International Chess Federation (FIDE) is the first global sports federation to launch its NFT Marketplace.
The NFT Marketplace will be dedicated to the sport of chess. And it will allow users to bid on and buy chess-related NFTs, chess-related art, unique collectibles, and much more, as announced.
Also in the announcement, FIDE disclosed that it would be partnering with TON labs, which recently rebranded to Everscale for this platform’s development.
This announcement comes some few days before the International Chess Federation World Championships which is set to be held in Dubai.
Moreover, the platform will accommodate the use of both fiat and cryptocurrencies.
The Marketplace for Chess
ChessNFT.com is the name of the marketplace.
This new chess NFT ecosystem will feature art and collectibles from the iconic chess moments. And the NFTs used on this Everscale Network will be in the new TrueNFT format; a format with many benefits over the existing formats.
“FIDE has started an exciting and ambitious journey of digitization to bring new experiences and opportunities to the chess enthusiasts around the world. We are excited for one of the first steps to be a comprehensive NFT marketplace, coming right in time for the world championship match in Dubai this November,” said Arkady Dvorkovich, President of FIDE.
The marketplace will be fully functional later this month. And FIDE hopes that it will help bring a new demographic to the world of blockchain. Specifically, the fans and players of chess who have doubled since Netflix’s 2020 miniseries “The Queen’s Gambit”.
TON AND International Chess Federation
The International Chess Federation is an organization that links various national chess bodies all over the world. It has its roots in Paris in 1924, and it has ties to over 195 national chess associations worldwide.
While TON is a full end-to-end decentralized network where users can interact with NFTs without an intermediary.
On this newly founded partnership, TON Labs co-founder and CEO Alexander Filatov said,
“Pairing the classic and universally loved sport of chess with the world of blockchain and crypto has the capability of bringing chess to the forefront of the minds of an entirely new cohort of fans across the globe,”
He went on to say that the wider chess community will get a chance to uniquely explore their passion through NFTs.
Chess and Crypto
However, this isn’t the first time chess and crypto have come together.
In 2019, Algorand and FIDE partnered to launch a pop-up museum in Hamburg, Germany, dedicated to blockchain history. And around the same time, the World Chess announced a security token offering alongside Algorand.