Even the centuries-old Dracula can find out about newfangled tech.
Aptos Labs, the developer behind the Aptos blockchain, introduced on Friday that it has partnered with NBCUniversal on a Web3 sport to publicize the upcoming movie Renfield that options Nicolas Cage, everybody’s favourite greatest worst actor, as Dracula.
The sport, which is on-line and accessible by way of both a QR code or URL, is already reside. Gameplay entails gamers wanting by way of a collection of stylized pictures based mostly on scenes from the film to determine which have hidden “bugs.” (Renfield, Dracula’s assistant and the main target of the film, apparently eats bugs throughout the movie to offer himself superpowers.)
After gamers efficiently determine the bugs is when Aptos comes into play. Customers are entered in a digital raffle with the possibility to win three digital collectibles, which embody film posters and comedian guide scenes from the movie. And people unfortunate sufficient to fail to search out the clandestine bugs nonetheless obtain a collectible. These non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are minted on the Aptos blockchain and customers can entry them by way of Petra, a pockets constructed by Aptos.
“We all know audiences simply wish to be related. They need story, and enjoyable, and no boundaries to connecting with their fandom,” Greg Reed, vp of know-how partnerships at Common Footage, mentioned in a press release. “Our job is to leverage high-performing, scalable networks.”
NBCUniversal’s partnership with Aptos Labs marks the media large’s first main foray into Web3, in accordance with Mo Shaikh, cofounder and CEO of Aptos Labs. And it’s one more coup for the fledgling blockchain developer because it continues to notch high-profile partnerships for its protocol lower than a 12 months and a half after it went reside.
“This partnership was actually born out of a shared curiosity of exploring Web3 and blockchain know-how to essentially improve the fan expertise,” Shaikh advised Fortune.
Shaikh and cofounder Avery Ching publicly launched the Aptos blockchain in October 2022. That they had beforehand been at Meta (previously Fb) engaged on Diem (previously Libra), the social media titan’s stablecoin challenge that was scuttled in January 2022 because it met important resistance from lawmakers and regulators within the U.S. and Europe.
Following the collapse of Diem, Shaikh and Ching, who have been particularly engaged on Diem’s stablecoin pockets, set off on their very own and used tech from their days at Meta to create Aptos, a layer-1 blockchain secured by proof of stake.
Regardless of its questionable token drop, Aptos quickly took off. Its token APT has a market capitalization of roughly $2.35 billion as of late Thursday afternoon. The blockchain boasts a number of the highest transaction speeds amongst protocols, per crypto analysis agency Messari. And along with NBCUniversal, Aptos Labs has introduced partnerships with Google Cloud in addition to MoonPay, the fintech agency that builds crypto funds infrastructure.
“We,” Shaikh advised Fortune, “don’t plan to simply cease with simply NBCUniversal and this movie.”
