Nike’s Web3 Arm ‘RTFKT’ Adds Tenth Ethereum Name Service Domain in Its Kitty

While Nike has not yet addressed the purchase of a new ENS, speculations making the rounds reportedly suggest that the footwear mammoth could be looking to issue ENS subdomains to its NFT holders.

By Radhika Parashar | Updated: 30 May 2022 18:00 IST

Nike’s Web3 Arm ‘RTFKT’ Adds Tenth Ethereum Name Service Domain in Its Kitty

Photo Credit: RTFKT

Any entity that owns an ENS becomes able to receive cryptocurrency, token, and blockchain-based assets

Highlights

Puma also holds .eth domains
Nike is yet to explain its ENS purchases
Nike has not made any ENS related announcements as yet

The Web3 arm of Nike, named ‘RTFKT', has purchased a new Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domain for ETH 19.72 (roughly Rs. 29 lakh). This brings the total tally of RTFKT's ENS holdings has risen to ten. The ENS is a distributed, open, and extensible naming system based on the Ethereum blockchain. It is capable of mapping human-readable names like ‘xyz.eth' to machine-readable identifiers. For its fresh purchase, Nike has chosen a dotswoosh.eth domain.

In addition to dotswoosh.eth, RTFKT also has possession of artifacts.eth, rtfkt.eth, skinvial.eth, drmos.eth, mintvial.eth, dreamos.eth, spacedrip.eth, dripcoin.eth, and m2tekno.eth as ENS domains, said a report by Decrypt.

While Nike has not given a reason to its new ENS addition, speculations are reportedly pointing towards a possibility for the footwear giant to use it for issuing ENS subdomains, that are monitored and controlled by the holder of the main domain.

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Nike/RTFKT have acquired
"DotSwoosh.eth" ENS domain for
20 ETH ($35k USD) :flushed::astonished:

We have done some research into
the name but haven't found any
information yet :thinking_face:

What do you guys think @Nike /@RTFKT are up to :interrobang:#nike #crypto #NFTCommuntiy #ENS #ensdomains #Ethereum #nftnews pic.twitter.com/dm2N2c4aOS
— NFT CLUB (@NFT__CLUB) May 28, 2022

With Nike getting active in the NFT space, it could be planning to allow its NFT holders to register for ENS subdomains under the dotswoosh.eth main domain.

Any individual or company that owns an ENS becomes able to receive cryptocurrency, token, and blockchain-based assets. Nike's ENS domain purchases could also be hinting at a potential plan to enable crypto payments for its high-end sports shoes.

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“Our findings suggest that ENS is showing gradually popularity during its four years' evolution, mainly due to its distributed and open nature that ENS domain names can be set to any kinds of records, even censored and malicious contents. We have identified several security issues and misbehaviors including traditional DNS security issues and new issues introduced by ENS smart contracts,” a report by Cornell University claims.

Well, for now it's only a matter of time before Nike finally gives a clarification on its ENS purchases with future announcements.

Meanwhile, Nike is not the only footwear mammoth that is exploring the ENS sector.

Back in February, Puma had purchased a decentralised domain and changed its name to ‘Puma.eth' on Twitter.

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Further reading: Nike, Cryptocurrency, Ethereum Name Service, ENS

Radhika Parashar

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Radhika Parashar is a senior correspondent for Gadgets 360. She has been reporting on tech and telecom for the last three years now and will be focussing on writing about all things crypto. Besides this, she is a major sitcom nerd and often replies in Chandler Bing and Michael Scott references. For tips or queries you could reach out to her at RadhikaP@ndtv.com. More