Grimace Forever: McDonald's Is Giving Away Free NFTs That You Can't Trade

By Andrew Hayward

Fresh off of his pop culture resurgence via purple shakes that launched an inescapable TikTok trend, fast food icon Grimace will next enter the NFT world via a McDonald’s giveaway in Singapore—and the cartoonish profile pictures (PFPs) can’t be traded once minted.

Beginning the week of August 21, the regional arm of the restaurant chain will offer up 2,000 total NFT collectibles featuring the global brand’s purple monster wearing varying expressions and accessories, each consisting of a distinctive blend of attributes. The NFTs will be free to claim, and only available through the McDonald’s mobile app in Singapore.

McDonald’s Singapore worked with crypto infrastructure startup Bandwagon Labs and pseudonymous local NFT artist The Hidden Walls to develop the promotion. Owners of the Grimace NFTs will have access to "exclusive treats in the future," says the fast food brand.

A McDonald's representative confirmed that the NFTs will be minted on Polygon, an Ethereum scaling network, although a tutorial video previously shared with Decrypt appeared to show a user connecting a wallet to the Ethereum mainnet to mint the NFT collectible.

Each Polygon NFT will take the form of a “soulbound” token, which means that it cannot be transferred from the wallet that initially mints it. That means that there will be no secondary sales for the project—it’s purely meant as a free keepsake for McDonald’s customers.

Users can participate via a crypto wallet like MetaMask or via Web3Auth, a service that lets users log in with a social media account to create a wallet. Bandwagon Labs founder Clarence Chan told Decrypt that the NFT mint’s blockchain elements are abstracted away for users, and that it all “happens under the hood like magic, enabled by our tech.”

"We're excited to bring Grimace closer to our fans through these unique digital collectibles," said Drina Chee, McDonald’s Singapore’s senior director of Marketing & Digital Customer Experience.

Broadly, McDonald’s isn’t new to the crypto world. In July, the fast food giant’s Hong Kong division debuted a playable world in the Ethereum metaverse game The Sandbox, with NFTs in the mix. McDonald’s in the U.S. launched commemorative McRib sandwich NFTs in 2021, meanwhile, while the French division had pixelated Big Mac NFT artwork.

Editor's note: This article was updated after publication the clarify the blockchain network and timing of the drop.

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