“This isn’t a crypto-native launch, it’s a mainstream audience launch that’s being distributed through Foot Locker across the country.”

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Back in the day, mixtapes were given out by hand in the form of cassettes or CDs as a way for emerging underground artists to share their work with the hopes of it becoming more widely distributed. Today, the next evolution of the mixtape drops on the blockchain through a partnership between Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, athletic brand PUMA and Legitimate—a web3 company that connects physical products to digital identities and provides a customizable layer for brands to create unique, digital experiences.

In the case of PUMA and Roc Nation, the digital experience is one that’s unlocked with the purchase of PUMA sneakers in the new RS-XL Mixtape collection. If you buy the physical shoes, you’ll receive access to exclusive music and exclusive content that’s being released starting today and continuing over the coming months.

“You scan an LGT tag—a near-field communication (NFC) chip—on the sneaker, which opens a web-based experience that you can’t send to anybody else because of our underlying authentication and encryption protocol,” Calvin Chan, CEO of Legitimate, said to me in a recent interview. “This isn’t a crypto-native launch, it’s a mainstream audience launch that’s being distributed through Foot Locker across the country.”

Part of Legitimate’s goal is to help integrate blockchain and web3 into mainstream society in a way that goes unnoticed by most people. In the case of the PUMA/Roc Nation partnership, it’s about bringing people together around the 50th anniversary of hip-hop in a way that alludes to the theme of a traditional mixtape.

A PUMA RS-XL Mixtape

“You’re connecting one of the biggest athletic footwear companies in the world, one of the biggest entertainment labels in the world, and you’re using fashion and technology to bridge it all together,” Chan said. Legitimate is helping PUMA and Roc Nation push through to something unique and different and is targeting a broader sphere of people by using blockchain technology, but not by appealing to the crypto community specifically.

“Chances are, nobody’s going to be scanning these sneakers to prove that they’re real,” Chan said. “They might, but most likely they’re going to be scanning these sneakers because over the course of the next six weeks, there will be exclusive tracks released that will only be accessible to people who own the sneakers.”

The idea is that people will soon start to experience their relationships with brands and products on a much more immersive level, but having them be powered by web3 won’t need to be of consequence. Much like how no one speaks of the Internet in terms of TCP/IP, Chan believes in the future there will be no mention of blockchain and web3 when discussing projects like Legitimate. 

“We don’t really market the crypto/blockchain side of what we do,” Chan said. “It’s really about catering toward a mainstream audience who may or may not have pre-instilled beliefs about what crypto, blockchain and NFTs mean to them, and then leveraging a solution that uses blockchain without them necessarily even knowing it.”

For the people who want to learn more about what’s under the hood, they’ll be able to, and for the rest of us, we’ll continue on enjoying the future of the Internet as just that—the future. But it's not only individuals who will need to learn how Legitimate’s NFC tagging can create a new and different consumer experience, it’s brands as well.

“A lot of these brands also have preconceived notions of what blockchain, crypto and web3 look like,” Chan said. “We help them launch products they’re familiar with—physical products—and help them connect the dots for a progressively more digitally-trending audience. Everyone is living more digital lives but everyone is still going to be a physical human being—at least for the near future—so we have to find that intersection.”

It’s an intersection that Chan hopes will one day soon be less novel. “We’re here to show the world that there is this misconception of what blockchain, NFTs and web3 are, and we’re here to change that conversation.”