SneakrCred and Cargo Team Up to Showcase Buscemi NFT Drop

Recently SneakrCred revealed their Buscemi Drop, a highly-anticipated collaboration between two emerging leaders in the Non-fungible token (NFT) space: SneakrCred and Cargo. The two startups have joined forces to showcase and sell a Buscemi NFT — which simultaneously celebrates legendary fashion designer Jon Buscemi, his eponymous sneaker brand (“Buscemi”) and his fabled David v. Goliath legal battles with Nike.

The pairing of these two companies is a natural fit. SneakrCred was created to help digital collectors authenticate and verify the ownership and histories of high-end, collectible sneakers. Cargo is a one-of-a-kind platform designed to help creators and collectors mass-create, share and sell ethereum-based digital assets.

The Buscemi Drop marks the first time the two organizations have worked together. So, it seemed like a great time to sit down with Casmir Patterson, co-founder of SneakrCred, and Sean Papanikolas, founder of Cargo to discuss the project.

Q: Casmir, let’s start with you. What is SneakrCred?

Casmir: “SneakrCred is a digital sneaker company. We make Sneakr Tokens for sneaker collectors who invest in hard-to-find shoes. In the centralized world, sneaker authentication is difficult to manage — especially when shoes hit the secondary market. It’s hard to transfer and track ownership when a pair of shoes have had multiple owners.

So, we set out to solve this challenge by offering a way to validate true ownership and cross-platform operability on the blockchain. We facilitate the certified buying and selling of shoes by issuing NFTs confirming shoe ownership in the metadata.

Our goal is to connect the physical world of sneakers to the digital world of NFTs so sneakerheads, cryptopunks, gamers and designers can participate in the decentralized economy.”

Q: Sean: your turn. Tell us about Cargo?

Sean: “I launched Cargo so digital creators and collectors would have access to an all-in-one platform where they could create, sell, and manage all their digital collectibles in one place.

Whether they are building, sharing, or selling audio, video, 3D, or image files, Cargo gives them access to a secure, fully-featured marketplace and robust infrastructure and APIs to power scalable, NFT based projects. They can even store and sell NFTs they created on other platforms.

Most importantly, Cargo enables them to create — or mint — an infinite number of NFTs for the same amount of transaction fees it would cost them to create a single collectible on other platforms.”

Q: Casmir, talk about the technical side of your Sneakr tokens.

Casmir: “Our Sneakr tokens are ethereum ERC721 & ERC1155 NFTs. The smart contact supporting our tokens offers both authentication and insurance in one product.

Each token is unique; each is part of a limited Sneakr series and each has an associated image connecting it to a specific shoe. The metadata in the NFT details the specifics of the sneakers, including when a shoe was worn, where and when.

Both the image and data can be fetched from the blockchain by a user, a game, or an application.”

Q: So, how did you find out about Cargo?

Casmir: “I was part of a Demo Days with Insight Labs last spring. Nick Casares, Program Director for Polyient Labs, introduced me to Sean, because Nick and Polyient were in the middle of incubating Cargo at that time and they were building out the Cargo marketplace.

Nick saw common ground between what we were doing and what Sean was doing. We were impressed by Sean’s vision and wanted to see if it held any value to what we were doing with Sneakrcred.”

Q: Sean, what was it about SneakrCred that appealed to you?

Sean: “Even before I met Casmir, SneakrCred was already on my radar. I thought their project was really unique and — to me — it made complete sense to bring the art of collecting physical sneakers into the digital realm. I think there are a lot of fun use cases and things you can do once people are collecting and truly owning the digital version of sneakers.

After speaking with Casmir, I recognized commonalities between Cargo and SneakrCred: We both see NFTs as a way to liberate creators from centralized systems. In my case, I want to offer creators a powerful, scalable NFT infrastructure and tools. In Casmir’s case, SneakrCred is all about allowing sneakerheads to freely express their imaginations.”

Q: Right now, SneakrCred is showcasing its work on Cargo. How can Cargo’s technology help SneakerCred with future projects?

Sean: “Using Cargo’s technology, SneakrCred would be able to save thousands of dollars in Ethereum transaction fees once they decide to start batch minting NFTs. Their newest collection will feature at least 1,000 new collectible sneakers and, right now, Cargo is the only NFT platform that enables SneakrCred — or any creator — to mint an infinite amount of unique collectibles in one transaction.

To accomplish this, we utilize efficient algorithms and utilize EIP-2309, an open standard we spearheaded. It provides a mechanism to track the creation and transfer of an infinite amount of digital collectibles — all at once rather than one at a time.

This standard helps push the NFT space forward by making the creation of digital collectibles scaleable. Cargo is the first to implement it and I think SneakrCred will be the first to fully leverage it.”

Q: Casmir, how did you settle on Cargo to showcase the Buscemi drop?

Casmir: “We were looking for a cutting-edge platform to showcase the Buscemi collectibles and Cargo’s Marketplace was the obvious choice. We also wanted to get digital sneakers in the wallets of sneakerheads with as little friction as possible and Cargo offered the simplest way to make that happen.”

Q: What’s next for SneakrCred and Cargo?

Casmir: “After the September 1st drop, SneakrCred is planning on collaborating with Cargo on two more exclusive drops: SneakrCred Retro and SneakrCred Future. These will be smaller batches released throughout September.”

Sean: Cargo is looking forward to continued collaborations with SneakrCred. In the coming months Cargo will be releasing Cargo Gems and SneakrCred collectibles will be among the first collectibles that will be eligible for Cargo Gem staking.

Check out the Buscemi Drop here. You can also see for yourself how Cargo is innovating NFT development at www.cargo.build.