Gazprom, an official partner of the UEFA European Championship 2020, today presents the first NFT trophy ever in recognition of the best goal scored at UEFA Euro 2020. The digital award will be presented to Czech forward Patrik Schick live on Gazprom football YouTube channel at 15:00 CET (16:00 Moscow time).
The NFT trophy, which combines sports, art and technology, will be presented to the audience at the ceremony. The digital award initiated by Gazprom was created by Russian calligraphy tourism artist Pokras Lampas (see below).
In May 2021, UEFA announced that Gazprom would sponsor the 2020 and 2024 editions of UEFA EURO. The terms of cooperation included the awarding of the UEFA EURO 2020 Goal of the Tournament, designed as an NFT trophy – a digital non-renewable version of a work of art.
Treasure hunt throughout the city
Lampas created an art installation of 432 balls, which became the physical prototype of the NFT trophy, at Gazprom’s stand in the football village of St. Petersburg during the championship. On June 27, the award’s prototype was divided into individual balls, each covered with a unique calligraphic ornament by the artist.
The picturesque balls were digitized, and on the eve of the championship final, the night of 10. -11. July, they appeared on the streets of the 11 cities hosting the UEFA European Championship 2020: Amsterdam, Baku, Budapest, Bucharest, Glasgow, Copenhagen, London, Munich, Rome, St. Petersburg and Seville. Thousands of residents and guests of European cities participated in the search for the balls.
The ceremony will be attended by Gazprom’s department head and press secretary Sergey Kupriyanov, UEFA marketing director Guy-Laurent Epstein, artist Pokras Lampas and the lead scorer Patrik Schick.
NFTs are unique digital certificates stored in blockchain, which guarantee the originality of the product and give exclusive rights to it. NFT technology was created in 2017 based on Ethereum smart contracts. The first work of art to be transformed into an NFT token was a black and white stencil by artist Banksy – a 2007 stencil entitled Morons (White). The blockchain company Injective Protocol bought it, burned it and created an NFT token – a virtual asset linked to “a digital sample of an object d’art”.
Source: The Nordic Page
