.SWOOSH Is the Home for Nike’s Virtual Creations

Since launching in late-2022, Nike’s .SWOOSH platform has experimented with new ways to distribute digital ownership across its customer base at scale. In the process, thousands of users have interacted onchain in order to collect virtual wearables that have utility both online and offline.

Initially, Nike onboarded users via the creation of unique .SWOOSH IDs that would serve as an entry ticket for future releases. Shortly after, Nike announced their first drop on the platform - The Our Force 1. And then, Nike followed up with the OF1 “TinaJ”, a physical pair of shoes that owners could digitally mint as a representation onchain.

To better understand user activity on .SWOOSH across these releases, I have prepared a Dune dashboard that can be interacted with here. The rest of this post will unpack a few key takeaways that I have observed so far.

Most SWOOSH IDs Are Still Dormant

Of the 384K unique SWOOSH ID’s that have been minted to date, over 250K of them have yet to execute a subsequent transaction on the platform. This includes both transactions that have no cost to the user (accepting an OF1 poster) as well as those that do (purchasing an OF1 Box).

In other words, only 34% of ID minters came back to the platform and did more. While these types of trends may be normal for consumer-facing apps, I believe there is an opportunity to grow the pool of active SWOOSH ID users across the next few rounds of releases. For example, could Nike target these idle ID holders and give them First Access to an upcoming drop?

Only 20% of OF1 Posters Were Redeemed

As part of Nike’s inaugural OF1 drop, they granted First Access rights to a select group of SWOOSH ID holders by allowing them to mint OF1 Posters ahead of the shoe release. Then, before the general release of the OF1 Box, users were able to burn their posters in exchange for a box.

However, of the 106K posters that were distributed to ID holders, only 22K of them - or about 20% - were ever redeemed for an OF1 Box. Again, this type of trend may be normal for consumer-facing apps, especially since redemption required a purchase of $19.80 to receive the OF1 Box. Although, this trend could be an indication of the following:

• The time gap (est. 6-8 weeks) between receiving the OF1 Poster and becoming eligible to redeem it for an OF1 Box was so lengthy that customers often forgot to return to the platform.

• The $19.80 purchase price was too high.

• The checkout process was difficult to navigate.

Around 40% of OF1 Boxes Remain Unopened

Of the 99.7K OF1 Boxes that have been minted, almost 42K remain unopened. This means that many box holders have not yet revealed the contents of their collectible. But aren’t they curious what’s inside?

While other NFT projects have followed a similar strategy of requiring that customers wait weeks before revealing the contents of their collectible, I am worried that in Nike’s case, customers simply forgot to come back to execute this final step.

Alternatively, OF1 Box holders may simply be waiting for Nike to allow for the sale of collectibles on secondary markets, which they recently teased in a recent blog post. In this way, box holders may be keeping their collectibles unopened so that they can then be sold at a premium to secondary buyers.

Next Steps

If I were to continue exploring .SWOOSH user activity, I would want to explore the following trends in much more detail:

• What % of OF1 Box mints came from SWOOSH IDs that received First Access to the sale?

• Who are the largest holders of OF1 Boxes / Shoes? How many units do they currently hold?

• What % of OF1 TinaJ minters had also minted boxes from the original OF1 release?

• Are SWOOSH ID token holders active onchain? What other DApps do they most commonly use?

Methodology

There were two distinct components to the work I’ve done so far.

First, I spent time doing a comprehensive review of relevant articles, blog posts, and videos to gain an understanding of the .SWOOSH platform. Then, I focused on building queries in Dune to analyze user activity in detail. I retrieved the contract address for each ERC-721 from the .SWOOSH website.