On August 13, Coca-Cola released a new collection of digital artworks on Base, raising both the temperature and the stakes of Onchain Summer, Coinbase’s initiative to promote its recently launched L2 solution.
The series of 8 NFTs, which can be minted on the mint.fun platform, marks the second phase of the multinational giant's ‘Masterpiece’ campaign, which kicked off in March with the release of a widely acclaimed promotional video.
The collection's balance of human creativity and Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated content helped Coca-Cola position itself as a company looking towards the future while at the same time fortifying its heritage as the favorite soft drink of consumers aged between 18 to 35 years.
The digital collectibles combine Coca-Cola bottles with the works of renowned artists, classic and contemporary. Starting at 0.0011 ETH ($2) and up to 0.0014 ETH ($2.5), users can acquire a digital Coca-Cola bottle imprinted with works such as “The Scream” by Edvard Munch, "Girl with a Pearl Earring" by Johannes Vermeer, and pieces from Aket and Vikram Kushwah.
It would be fair to say that the NFT market has seen better days than of late. Both trading volumes and the number of sales have seen a significant drop in recent months.
Rather than a market collapse, however, this momentarily slump perhaps highlights a shifting trend towards ‘low-barrier NFTs’ that, due to having a low price, cater to wider audiences, coinciding with the blockchain ecosystem's shift from making ‘niche’ products and services to producing solutions for everybody.
With an average price of $2, the Coca-Cola collection sits well within this shifting trend. The accessible nature of the NFTs is also in line with Coinbase’s mission of increasing economic freedom in the world by bringing everybody on-chain.
The U.S. crypto exchange has been devoting much to its efforts lately. Last week it released Base, an Ethereum L2 scaling solution, and to publicize this, announced the “Onchain Summer” initiative, a “multi-week celebration of art, culture, gaming, community, and more” with new mints happening every day in partnership with companies from inside and outside the blockchain ecosystem.
The vast array of affordable digital collectibles on offer pitches low-barrier NFTs as a strong competitor to Web3 games for the potential onboarding of new users to the ecosystem. Presently Web3 games, the most popular on-ramp for people to become blockchain users, have a market dominance of 41%.
Coinbase is betting its money on collectibles putting up a good fight for the title, by launching both a platform and products that are easy and cheap to use and, like the Masterpiece NFTs collection, attention-grabbing and high-quality.
