Disney, Dapper Labs Team Up to Launch Digital Collectibles App, but Avoid the Term ‘NFT’

Disney has teamed up with Web3 gaming studio Dapper Labs to launch an app for fans to gather digital collectibles. The ‘Disney Pinnacle’ app is aimed at letting Disney fans digitise pin collections. Small and portable, Disney pins come in a variety of designs and represent popular Disney characters, movies, and theme park attractions. The initiative, however, has tried to keep away from the term ‘NFT’ — digital tokens infamous for their volatile nature in terms of value.

Disney Pinnacle will let fans purchase pins that are digital versions of those physical pins that remain popular at Disney amusement parks, AdAge said in a report on Tuesday.

The Disney-Dapper duo have opened a waitlist programme for interested people to register for an early access to the Disney Pinnacle mobile app.

“As the technology gets better we can sort of abstract it out more, so the word ‘NFT’ doesn’t show up anywhere in the product. The open nature of Web3 platforms is why we can have the full authenticity, and guaranteed tradability, and full ownership, and all of these features, that set these products apart from stickers in WhatsApp or whatever it might be,” Roham Gharegozlou, CEO of Dapper Labs, was quoted as commenting on the development.

Instead of NFTs, these digital Disney pins will be referred to as ‘digital collectibles.’ The duo’s decision to maintain a distance from the NFT tag could likely be an attempt to stay away from the uncertainty and suspicion surrounding NFTs. A recent dappGambl report claimed that most NFTs had lost their values in the backdrop of a shaky Web3 market.

All the digital pins that will be made available through this programme, meanwhile, will be based on Disney’s original intellectual property and will be minted on the Flow blockchain. Collectors will be given a platform, via the app, to buy and trade pins with others. They will be required to register themselves onto the Dapper wallet ecosystem that will be accessible from within the app.

Disney has been trying to test the Web3 waters for a while now. In February last year, the entertainment conglomerate had hired new executives to chalk out profitable metaverse strategies. The company was also looking to onboard corporate lawyers to tackle legal work around emerging technologies like NFTs and the metaverse.