🤔 wen car?

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Today’s story is for the Back to the Future fans among us. If you like cars — especially futuristic ones — this one’s for you.

— Kate Irwin

Star Trek actor Patrick Stewart endorses DeLorean

DeLorean Labs — the crypto arm of the rebooted 80s car company featured in the Back to the Future films — is working with British actor Sir Patrick Stewart to promote the upcoming DeLorean electric car.

“They say the best way to predict the future is to create it,” Stewart said in a video. 

DeLorean Labs has launched onchain vehicle reservations using Sui NFTs for the upcoming DeLorean Alpha 5 EV — which would be the first DeLorean produced in over 40 years. We know it’s expected to be available in at least red, white and gray paint options so far, and the team tells me it’s slated to release by 2027.

The websites for DeLorean, its crypto arm, and its 80s classic cars are separate. But DeLorean Labs is part of the DeLorean Motor Company.

DeLorean Labs is planning to launch a DMC token at some point in the future, as well as token staking. There’s also the dedicated onchain marketplace for DeLorean reservation and vehicle resale. Once the car is released, vehicle stats are also expected to exist onchain, as well. 

DeLorean is using Sui for all of this, and it is migrating their “legacy” Build Slot NFTs (roughly 1,300 were sold back in 2023) to the Sui chain and new marketplace. Those legacy NFT holders get the first cars made, and we don’t know if there will be a cap on the total number of NFTs issued at any point.

That said, Evan Kuhn, president of DeLorean Labs, told me they may make anywhere from 1,300 to 10,000 vehicles a year. It will be a low-volume, more exclusive car brand. 

“Originally we were going to launch the build slot NFTs on Polygon, [but] there were some technical restrictions so DeLorean partnered with Sui Foundation and Mysten Labs as the Move language was very conducive to DeLorean’s goals,” Kuhn told me via email.

Buyers have to register a DeLorean account, connect or create a Sui (Slush) wallet, and buy an Alpha Club membership from DeLorean to then buy a Build Slot NFT (to then ultimately buy the car). The Alpha Club membership is a one-time $88 fee (note that it has also been called the Alphas Club in some areas of the DeLorean site).

Build Slot NFTs can be purchased for $2,500 each from DeLorean’s NFT marketplace. Each NFT then lets buyers over age 18 secure a place in line to then later buy one Alpha 5 EV. 

You might not necessarily pay $2,500 to get one of the 1,272 NFTs, though. If you have an Alpha Club membership, you can make bids on others’ NFTs to get one or more for a price that may be lower — or higher — than that $2,500 amount. But only $2,500 per NFT will be ultimately credited toward a car. Each NFT is a spot in line, with lower numbers getting their reservations processed before higher numbers. We don’t yet know how much the Alpha 5 EV will ultimately cost, either, but some have guessed its MSRP may be around $125,000.

It’s a lot of hoops to jump through, for sure, but it’ll be up to DeLorean fans to decide if it’s worth it to get the 80s-inspired car of their dreams.

My two cents? The car looks great so far — like a Tesla mixed with a Porsche — but we don’t yet know when exactly it’ll come out (and you can’t test drive it right now). 

You could be waiting a couple years for that $2,500 to pay off.

Real Users. Real Products. Onchain.

Permissionless IV is for the teams building crypto that doesn’t feel like crypto.

Wallets that don’t suck. Loyalty programs that break out of Web2. NFTs with context. Consumer apps that actually ship.

It’s not about what the tech can do — it’s about what people are already using it for. Crypto meets culture, UX, and utility in Brooklyn this June.
 
📅 June 24–26 | Brooklyn

• Speaking of long waits, the Solana Seeker phones will finally start shipping three months from now, in August, apparently.

• FIFA is getting its own Avalanche subnet (L1 chain). We’ve seen a lot of sports-meets-crypto deals in the past. Tech firm Modex launched and oversees FIFA’s existing NFTs on its FIFA Collect platform, and Modex played a role in making the decision to launch a FIFA Avalanche L1.

• Sui said they were able to get enough validators to ignore transactions tied to the Cetus hack to stop the swiped crypto from disappearing. Is this a sign of centralization? Does decentralization still matter? That’s one of crypto’s most core — and eternal — debates.