‘How angry are you when your dad holds the DOT?’

Connor Daly‘The name s is synonymous with speed. Legendary Irish Formula 1 driver Derek Daly’s agility and adrenaline run through his veins, inherited from his father.

He’s also become a part of the Polkadot family, so community members and employees of developer Parity Technologies headed to the 108th Indy 500 event on May 26 to watch him race. Daly started 29th out of 33 cars, moved up to the lead, and led an incredible 22 laps.

Given that he was driving a pink Polkadot-branded DRR-Cusick Motorsports Chevrolet, he helped promote the DOT brand to a total of 13.3 million viewers (more television viewers worldwide) for about 10% of the 200-lap race.

To be fair, most of you have probably asked, “What is Polkadot?” But it’s just the beginning.

Daly finished 10th in Indianapolis, earning the ‘Biggest Driver’ trophy.

Chrissy Hill, Interim COO of Parity Technologies, said it was an incredible race.

“This was a big event that was on a lot of people’s bucket lists, and I felt very honored to be there as part of the team and community,” Hill said.

“Conor is an outstanding individual, and we are very proud to be his sponsor, reaching an audience of 13 million people, not including his influence on social media,” she said.

Cryptocurrency and Auto Racing: F1, Indy 500 and Supercars

During the last bull market, cryptocurrencies became heavily involved in the world of motorsports. In 2021, cryptocurrency exchanges have signed dozens of high-profile, multi-million dollar sponsorship deals with almost every Formula One team. By the start of the 2022 season, there were 16 official cryptocurrency team sponsors in addition to Crypto.com, which became the primary sponsor of the race itself.

However, the collapse of FTX and the ensuing bear market depleted most of those funds. However, Crypto.com, a Singapore-based exchange and the first cryptocurrency brand to join the sport, is still part of the fabric.

The name can be seen on hoardings around every circuit on the Grand Prix schedule and on the cars of the Aston Martin Cognizant Racing Team. Cryptocurrency casino and betting platform Stake will feature prominently in Formula One over the next two years thanks to naming rights to Sauber’s F1 cars (a partnership announced by Drake).

And OKX is continuing its sponsorship of McLaren race cars in 2024, and its relationship with Australian star driver Daniel Ricciardo has allowed Cointelegraph to speak with him in 2022 and 2023.

Other players, such as the Minima layer-1 blockchain for DePin project, are participating in the Supercar series with their data tracker for the McLaren GT4 supercar.

However, this year Polkadot is the only cryptocurrency company sponsoring the Indy 500.

Who is Connor Daly?

Daly is the son of Ireland’s most successful F1 driver, Derek Daly. He competed in 49 F1 Grands Prix for teams such as Tyrrell and Williams in the late 1970s and early 80s.

But he’s not just following in the footsteps of a storied family. With over 100 IndyCar races, including top podium finishes and pole positions, Daly has carved out a niche for himself in the competitive world of motorsports.

He has won almost every level of racing up to IndyCar and has won three championships. He has been on the podium a lot. He is also one of 29 drivers to compete in both the Indy 500 and Daytona 500 and compete in Europe’s Formula 2 series in the same year. Daly is also following in his father’s footsteps in broadcasting and hosts a very popular podcast called Speed ​​Street.

So how did he end up flying the flag for Polkadot?

“I’m not a technology leader, but I want to understand what’s going on. When I first heard about Bitcoin, I was fascinated. Web3 is of great interest to me and I love following really smart people in this field. This is the future of the internet,” he told the Magazine.

“One day I received a long message from Chris Wade within the Polkadot community. It was a very long message. He said it would be cool for Polkadot to participate in the biggest sporting event in the world. “He wrote a lot of words that I had to look up, and I got interested because I knew I needed sponsorship to win the Indianapolis 500,” he said.

Wade runs an educational platform called Learn Polkadot. After he caught Daly’s attention, he worked with a group of other community members to finalize the proposal.

Sponsorships are very important in car racing. It takes a lot of money to get the car and team to perform at their best.

“I’m not an arrogant person, but I love the Indy 500. I also believe that the exposure Polkadot can gain is huge and opens the door to a whole new audience. At the same time, I found out that my father holds a DOT, which I have no idea about. How angry are you?” Daley says.

Polkadot’s DOT, created by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood, saw a huge rally in 2021 and 2022, but has since slipped out of the top 10 and is down 44% since March. So while it has a large treasury managing 41 million DOTs (equivalent to $410 million), it could also benefit from larger exposure.

With a market capitalization of over $9 billion, Polkadot is one of the largest Web3 protocols with fully decentralized governance. The community of DOT holders can vote in favor of funding proposals by locking up their tokens for a set period of time. It was introduced in mid-2023 and is part of an on-chain decentralized initiative known as OpenGov, which also handles technical updates to the Polkadot ecosystem.

In its first six months, OpenGov has led to a significant increase in governance activity, with the average number of referendums and votes skyrocketing by 1,008% and 1,981% respectively.
The Treasury offer also saw a significant increase of 405%.

The Daly proposal, OpenGov Referendum #514, received overwhelming support from thousands of voters and pledged 290,000 DOT to cover sponsorship fees and related costs for Daly racing teams.

While it is easy for a centralized exchange like Crypto.com to decide to pay for a sports sponsorship package, there are significant challenges for a decentralized network like Polkadot to do the same. There were hopes in early 2022 that the community could find a way to support Spanish football giants FC Barcelona, ​​but at this point OpenGov had not been established and the bid fell through.

Hill said Daly was the DAO’s first major sports sponsorship and he wasn’t entirely sure the community would get on board.

“If you want the community to vote and pass sports-related sponsorship proposals, you have to do a lot of education about it, but you can’t assume people will know. “It’s a different conversation than just corporate sponsorship.”

But when we actually did it, the approval rating was overwhelming.

“He really impressed the Polkadot community and achieved an incredible 95.8% approval rating for his proposal,” says Hill.

The sponsorship is worth about $2.1 million, an amount Daly says he doesn’t take lightly.

“Receiving this grant was a proud day and I will do everything I can, including winning, to repay this vote of confidence. On the track, we are handing out thousands of flyers on hero cards with QR codes so people can download the wallet and start their cryptocurrency experience.”

Daly is now pretty in pink with Polkadot branding. He sees enormous potential for racing to attract a whole new audience to cryptocurrency.

“My job is to make sure our partnership benefits everyone – bringing Polkadot people to racing and racing people to Polkadot. And to win,” Daly says.

Born again as a cryptocurrency fan

Daly now has cryptocurrency firmly in his blood. In July, he and his team hope to travel to Brussels to speak at the Polkadot Decoded conference. He said he wanted to meet the people who supported his car and career.

“Securing sponsorship based on votes is very unusual. It’s very humbling. It would be an absolute honor to meet the community, explain what I do, and learn more about the Polkadot community,” says Daly.

“Oh, and did I mention that my dad has a DOT? I had no idea until I started this journey. “It was meant to be.”

Looking at the picture Daly paints of how much more dangerous things were when racing, he feels lucky his father is still around.

“Everyone crashes, every driver crashes, but I’m lucky I haven’t had a crash in six years and I haven’t been injured in that time either. “During my father’s time, everyone was crazy and much more dangerous.”

subscribe

The most interesting read on blockchain. Delivered once a week.

Jillian Godsil

Jillian Godsil is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster and author. She brought changes to Ireland’s election law in 2014, following a constitutional challenge in the Irish Supreme Court. She is a former candidate for the European Parliament and advocates for diversity, women in blockchain, and homelessness.