Polkadot is coming to the Indianapolis 500 after community members voted to select IndyCar racing star Connor Daly as a brand ambassador. The one-year collaboration, announced by the Daly Company during a press conference on Tuesday, will begin at the first race in May.
The motion to sponsor Daly was approved by a 95.8% community vote on the Polk Assembly website. The plan, which was up for review from Feb. 19 to March 14, asked the DOT for $290,000, about $2.1 million, to cover $1.7 million in commercial sponsorship fees for one race team and other costs.
“The Indy 500 is the biggest spectacle in racing — ask any race car driver and it's the one race they want to win,” Polkadot Community Contributor Chris Wade, who led the initiative, told Decrypt.
“Additionally, Polkadot's sponsorship of Conor includes NASCAR truck and nitrocross racing, and Conor's experience trumps all,” Wade added.
He drove the Delhi Indy 500 and Daytona 500 in the same year and the Formula 2 European Series.
“It's fast, dynamic and adaptive—just like Polkadot,” Wade said.
In the year Launched in 2020 by Ethereum founder Gavin Wood, Polkadot is a “multi-chain network” that aims to connect various specialized blockchains into a unified network. Currently, according to CoinGecko, the 15th largest blockchain by market capitalization, Polkadot (DOT) is up 3.2% for the week and is trading at $8.84.
“Thousands of individuals in the Polkadot community, not just a corporate marketing team, have chosen me as their ambassador, which is an incredible honor and a reflection of what a very free and open internet can look like in the future,” Daley said in a statement.
Image: Polkadot/Connor Daly
The sponsorship deal with Daly, through Dreyer & Reinbold Racing and Cusick Motorsports, is the latest partnership between racing and the crypto industries.
In the year In 2021, McLaren Racing tapped Tezos to launch a collection of Formula 1 NFTs. In the year In February 2022, Red Bull Racing signed a $150 million sponsorship deal with cryptocurrency exchange Bybit. Another Red Bull Racing deal followed in June 2023 with Sui blockchain creator Myston Labs.
In January, Grammy Award-winning rapper Drake announced a two-year naming sponsorship deal between Sauber Formula 1 and crypto gambling site Stake.
It's exciting and terrifying that I'm competing not just for a brand name or a logo, but representing the developers, investors and regular people who are building the web of tomorrow. “When Sports History Is Made.”
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.
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