Ubisoft Becomes First Major Gaming Company to Roll Out in-game NFTs
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Ubisoft Announces NFT Platform
After dabbling in the world of cryptos and NFTs, Ubisoft has announced its own NFT platform called Quartz where it will offer limited-edition cosmetic items for Ubisoft games which can be re-sold on third-party marketplaces for cryptocurrencies. Each NFTs called “Digits” is unique and tracks who has owned it over time and will have its own serial number that can be seen in-game.
Ubisoft is initially offering three “drops” of free Digits - a helmet, a gun skin, and leg armor on December 9th, 12th, and 15th. Additionally, players must fulfill certain criteria to be eligible to claim them. More drops are planned for early 2022, Ubisoft says.
Calling it an “experiment”, the gaming giant says Quartz is currently available to players in the US, Canada, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Australia, and Brazil.
Energy-Efficient Playable Non-Fungible Tokens
Ubisoft says Quartz will be "energy efficient" because it uses Tezos, a blockchain which claims to use "exceedingly less energy to operate than Proof-of-Work blockchains such as Bitcoin or Ethereum". Commenting on this, Ubisoft's blockchain technical director Didier Genevois, said:
"We chose Tezos because of its original Proof-of-Stake network and its leadership on clean NFTs. One transaction on their network uses the same amount of energy as streaming 30 seconds of video, while the previous generation of blockchain networks can consume the same energy required for one year of non-stop streaming."
Ubisoft says transactions on Quartz use 1 million times less energy than a Bitcoin transaction. Not only that, a single transaction on Quartz is comparable to 30 seconds of video streaming whereas a single Bitcoin transaction is estimated for an uninterrupted year of video streaming.
