Is There a Use Case for an Icecat NFT?

Some years ago, we started piloting with the Icecat token ICURY. We created it with an Ethereum based (ERC-20) smart contract. Till the EU started to heavily regulate the crypto market, we listed and traded it even on a few exchanges for a while. But, the exchanges closed shop or left the EU. And, we didn’t want to commit to other exchanges that were clearly not regulator-proof. Moreover, we decided not to put too much effort into ICURY as the transaction costs on Ethereum were soaring. As a side-track, we started supporting cryptos as payment for Icecat services. But, in all honesty, this option is not really popular within our business community. All in all, quite some interesting learnings from these experiments in the crypto space.

The breakthrough of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in art, toys, and gaming and fashion, and our research into more sustainable blockchains has led to a revival of our ICURY project. We are now working on the creation of an Icecat NFT collection.

Icecat NFT collection

What is the basic idea of Icecat NFTs? Icecat is basically a collection of unique product data sheets, i.e., unique records with Icecat IDs. These Icecat IDs have corresponding permalinks, and product identifiers including brand + product code or GTINs. The permalinks can be transformed into unique QR codes. Which logically resolves in the URL of each unique product data-sheet. Each NFT will store the unique identifiers and permalinks of each product data-sheet, linked to the unique QR code as an image. The objective of Icecat is not to sell these NFTs. But, as we don’t want exposure to the likes of the SEC, the goal might be to create an alternative (blockchain) index to the Icecat product database.

From this, we can start to learn to know the value of such a collection of NFTs. Is the corresponding QR code, with its metadata, actually of interest to our community? It might be of use to retailers to have a blockchain that permanently and for all eternity provides a link to a product’s metadata and to the product data sheet with all the brand’s detailed messaging. Thus, there might even be a product scanner that translates an Icecat QR image on a product’s packaging via the NFT blockchain to the forever version of the product data sheet.

Martijn Hoogeveen

Founder and CEO of Icecat NV. Investor. Ph.D.