Even the crypto giants are not immune to market pressures. Recent reports have highlighted significant workforce reductions at two major blockchain companies, Circle and Dapper Labs, despite their substantial fundraising successes.
Circle, a leading stablecoin issuer, has recently reduced its workforce slightly to maintain a “strong balance sheet”. The company has raised a total of $1.1 billion in funding over 11 rounds, with the latest funding raised on April 12, 2022, from a Private Equity round.
Despite this financial backing, the company has found it necessary to reduce or end investments in non-core activities and reduce operational expenses, which includes a marginal reduction in headcount. However, Circle continues to identify new areas for investment and hire in key areas of focus on a global basis.
Similarly, Dapper Labs, known for developing popular NFT collectibles such as CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shot, has announced its third round of staff layoffs in less than a year as a reflection of the broader slump in the crypto and NFT markets.
The company has let go of 51 employees, representing around 12% of the company’s staff. This comes despite Dapper Labs raising a total of $612.5 million in funding over seven rounds, with the latest funding raised on November 21, 2022.
Although Bitcoin price has been above $30,000 for nearly 20 days and some traders have anticipated a bull market, the workforce reductions at both Dapper Labs and Circle remind us of the ongoing challenges in the crypto market overall and the bearish market is not over yet.
Dapper Labs, the firm behind NBA Top Shot, said that pro sports leagues are no longer resistant to exploring nonfungible tokens (NFTs) now that the sector is hot.
Speaking at Yahoo Finance’s All Markets Summit on Monday, Dapper Labs’ head of partnerships, Caty Tedman, said that the stance of professional sporting organizations suddenly shifted regarding NFTs amid the sector’s booming growth in early 2021, stating:
“The conversation has shifted dramatically, where I think there’s a little bit of an understanding that there’s something here. I meet very little resistance these days that NFTs are a thing.”
Dapper emerged as a pioneer in officially licensed sports NFTs when it launched NBA Top Shot in late 2020. The firm has since inked partnerships with other major sporting franchises, including the National Football League (NFL), the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), the Spanish soccer organization La Liga and the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).
Speaking on Dapper’s initial discussions with the NBA, Tedman recounted that the organization expressed apprehension over the fact that NFTs had not yet been proven to work as a means for sports merchandising, stating:
“At that time, it was a lot of explanation and we spent a lot of time with lawyers and people in finance to talk about what it looks like to have secondary revenue.You don’t have secondary revenue on merchandise […] what does it look like to have ownership in perpetuity of assets for consumers.”
Tedman added that Dapper had been “lucky to start with the NBA” as the organization’s associate vice president of Global Partnerships & Media, Adrienne O’Keeffe, was open to exploring NFTs.
Related:Nifty News: The rise of environmentally-focused NFT collections
According to data from CryptoSlam, NBA Top Shot NFTs have generated more than $32 million worth of secondary sales in October, with the figure representing a 58% increase compared to the month before.
Cointelegraph reported last week that daily trade volume for NBA Top Shot NFTs surged more than 440% after the project launched its retro “Run It Back 2005–06” packs on Oct. 15.
Despite the surging growth in October, trading volumes are still well below the
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has teamed up with legendary electronic dance music (EDM) DJ Paul Oakenfold to launch a tokenized album on Cardano.
Oakenfold is a three-time Grammy Award nominee and his career in the music industry spans back to the early 1980s. His upcoming album dubbed “Zombie Lobster” was announced during the Cardano summit on Sept. 27.
Every aspect of the album will be tokenized on the Cardano blockchain, including cover art, tracks, sleeve notes and remixes. The album is part of a release from an NFT project named “Starship Universe”, which is operated by music entrepreneur Alon Shulman, who manages DJ’s such as Carl Cox.
Starship Universe will reportedly release thousands of NFTs on Cardano, as part of the collaborative partnership. “I’m excited to welcome Starship Universe as it lands on Cardano and we open up new frontiers together,” Hoskinson said.
While a release date for the tokenized album hasn’t been set, Hoskinson teased on Tuesday that it is coming soon, after he changed his Twitter profile picture to a photo of himself working a DJ turn-table.
DJ Chaz the Hosk-Cat (Twitter)
Become a Stoner Cats star
Mila Kunis’s Stoner Cats — the NFT project tied to an animated cartoon series that clogged the Ethereum network during its first drop — is offering two members of the community a chance to feature as guest stars for the second episode.
The audition was announced on Oct. 1 and is calling for people to read lines for two guest characters named “Employee” and “Delivery Guy.” The chosen voice actors will also receive a free NFT from a future Stoner Cats drop, and receive an acting credit on IMDb.
EXCITING NEWS: you can be a part of Stoner Cats episode 2!! directions on how to apply below. winners will also get an NFT from a future drop pic.twitter.com/DNhgjlCXe9
— Stoner Cats (@stonercatstv) September 30, 2021
Wannabe voice actors have until midnight on Saturday (PST) to submit their line reads and must record three different variants of each line.
The Stoner Cats show is voiced by a long list of celebs such as Kunis, her husband Ashton Kutcher, Jane Fonda, Seth MacFarlane, Chris Rock and even Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. The first collection of 10,420 NFTs was dropped in July, and sold out within 35 minutes.
NFL confirms partnership with Dapper Labs
The NFL and Dapper Labs have confirmed rumors they are parnering to launch tokenized collectibles.
According to a Sept. 29 announcement, the partnership will see the creation of digital highlight NFTs in a similar fashion to the widely popular NBA Top Shot marketplace.
“The irreplaceable nature of the NFT captures what is special about sports fandom,” said Steve Scebelo the President of NFL Players Inc. “Our players are immensely excited for the NFLPA […] to make this significant push into the digital collectibles market.”
fans, get ready to take @NFL fandom to the next level. We’ve announced a partnership with @NFL @NFLPA to create exclusive digital video highlight NFTs for NFL fans to celebrate the game they love on @NFLxDapper
Henry Lowenfels, the chief product officer at OneTeam Partners, who handles digital licensing for the NFL Players Association, said in an interview with GamesBeat they are hoping to replicate the “provenance” of NBA Top Shot with the NFL’s collectibles.
“The games are played pretty much every Sunday during the season, and these moments can be dropped at the same time and be the topic of conversation for the week,” he said.
“I view this as the early innings of blockchain-based products in the same way that people were using the internet in 1993. It was mostly technologists and early adopters of the technology. People want to spend on the things they love,” he added.
Related:Ripple launches $250M fund for NFT creators
DC enters the NFT sector
WarnerMedia’s superhero comic giant DC is giving away free NFTs as part of its upcoming DC FanDome event on Oct. 16.
According to a Sept. 29 report from Variety, DC has partnered with Palm NFT Studio to release tokenized comic book covers depicting superheroes such as Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and Harley Quinn.
Comic Book NFTs (DC Comics)
“This drop pays homage to our 87-year history while visualizing a future in which NFTs play a foundational role in novel ways of interacting with DC content and unlocking new experiences,” said Jim Lee, DC’s publisher and chief creative officer.
The NFT drop will go live on Oct. 5, and the tokens will be issued to users who register for the free virtual FanDome event that will be hosted on multiple platforms this month including Twitch and YouTube.
Palm NFT Studio chief content officer Matt Mason, told Variety that varying rarity levels “will make the less-common NFTs more valuable, and the entire collection will grow in importance to fans as it becomes clearer that this drop represents the start of an entirely new chapter for DC Comics, and the use of blockchain as a medium for fan engagement and storytelling.”
Roundup
Social media platform TikTok has announced its first foray into the NFT market with a new collection inspired by its leading trendsetters such as Lil Nas X, Bella Poarch, Brittany Broski and Curtis Roach.
Cointelegraph reported on Sept. 30 that Twitter unveiled an in-development tool that will enable users to display a verified NFT as their profile picture.
Tokenized sport collectibles projects have raised almost $1 billion in funding in the space of a week.
On Sept. 22 Dapper Labs — the firm behind the Flow blockchain and the widely popular tokenized basketball collectibles, NBA TopShot — announced a further $250 million in a funding round led by tech-focused hedge fund Coatue.
As reported by Cointelegraph on Wednesday, French-based NFT soccer trading card game developer Sorare raised $680 million in Series B funding led by Japanese fintech giant Softbank. The funding round raised the valuation of the firm to $4.3 billion.
The combined funding for the two firms tally’s in at $930 million, marking a significant bet on the sports token sector at a time when some pundits are calling the wider nonfungible market dead due to declining sales volume and floor prices.
Dapper Labs
The latest $250 million round adds to the $305 million and $65 million in funding Dapper Labs has fetched so far in 2021. While the firm didn’t specifically outline its roadmap following the announcement, the firm has teased that there are more projects coming to the Flow blockchain soon.
According to Dapper Labs, the capital will be used to fund further licensed NFT projects across sports, music and entertainment, along with scaling up the NBA Top Shot platform. Earlier this month news broke that Google had partnered with Dapper to support NFT and web 3.0 product development on its blockchain.
Dapper’s NBA Top Shot has been a resounding success since opening to the public in October last year, with data from CryptoSlam showing that the NFTs have generated more than $716 million in sales on secondary markets.
However, it appears that hype for the project has cooled over the past few months, with secondary sales failing to break $50 million in a month since April. That’s less than a quarter of the volume in the peak months for Top Shot NFT trading in February and March, which generated $224 million and $220 million worth of secondary sales respectively.
According to CryptSlam estimates, the most valuable Top Shot moments are the NFTs depicting Lebron James, with the combined market cap of 114,114 James NFTs tallying in at $104 million.
Sorare expansion
Sorare’s whopping $680 million adds to a $50 million Series A funding round in February, marking a meteoric rise for the platform in 2021. Sorare has outlined ambitious plans for the latest funds moving forward.
Within the realm of soccer, the firm’s goal is to partner with the top 20 professional soccer leagues across the globe, along with the top 50 international football associations for both the men’s and women’s teams.
As it stands, the Sorare platform has licensing deals with 177 teams from a total of 36 domestic and international leagues. The firm notched an important milestone earlier this month when it signed a deal with the Spanish La Liga to release tokens for all players from the 20 teams in the league.
The funds will also be used to ramp up marketing campaigns, hire key staff members, open its first U.S.-based office and expand its NFT collectible model into other sporting codes.
The Sorare platform launched back in April 2019. Despite a year’s head start on NBA Top Shot, its NFTs have generated a significantly lower amount with a total of $84.8 million worth of sales on secondary markets.
Sales peaked in March with $15.34 million before cooling down over the next three months. However secondary sales have been on an upward trend in July and August with $8.8 million and $14.8 million respectively. While there are eight days remaining in September, Sorare NFTs have generated $10.5 million worth of sales suggesting that figure may surpass $14 million for the second month in a row.
NBA Top Shot, the popular pro-basketball NFT collectibles from Dapper Labs, will sell exclusive tokens at NBA Summer League games scheduled in Las Vegas for next week.
The tokens will be the first Top Shot NFTs, dubbed “moments,” made available for exclusive purchase from a physical location and they mark the first time that moments have been sold at an NBA game.
The exclusive NFTs will commemorate a highlight of each game on August 8, 9, and 10 respectively. Each edition will see a minimum of 1,000 copies minted, while the total number of moments minted will be determined according to demand. Fans are limited to purchasing 10 tokens daily per person.
Match attendees will be able to pre-order the yet-to-be-created tokens from a Top Shop kiosk in Las Vegas’s Thomas & Mack Center for $5 each. The NFTs will then be transferred to the Top Shot accounts of buyers after they have been created.
NBA Top Shot is showing out in a MAJOR way at #NBASummerLeague
For the 1st time EVER, Top Shot collectors will have the ability purchase a Moment in-arena, and receive a Moment from a game they saw in-person — avail at our Top Shot Kiosk in Vegas.
While intriguing, the first batch of moments seem unlikely to become valuable collectors items in future. With the event hosting off-season games, the NFTs will primarily feature freshly drafted rookies and minor league players.
According to DApp Radar, Top Shot is currently the second-most popular NFT platform by both number of sales and active traders, with roughly 109,600 Top Shot Marketplace users executing 675,350 transactions over the past 30 days — although total trade account is down more than 53% monthly.
According to CryptoSlam, the average daily value of Top Shot trading for the past month has been roughly $700,000.
Crypto has seen fast adoption throughout the sports world.
High-profile sponsorships are giving crypto companies mainstream exposure.
Crypto assets like NFTs and fan tokens are creating new value for sports organizations.
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Sports and crypto may seem like two unrelated worlds, but they have much to offer each other under closer inspection.
Crypto Exposure Through Sponsorships
In 2014, Bitcoin payment provider Bitpay signed on with ESPN to sponsor a college football game, the St. Petersburg Bowl. Although minor, it marked a significant milestone as the first major crypto sports deal. This year, crypto made it to the NFL as the New York Giants became the league’s first team with a crypto sponsorship, partnering with Grayscale Investments.
The Giants announce a partnership with Grayscale Investments®. @Grayscale is the first cryptocurrency partner of an NFL team!
While football started the trend of crypto sponsorships in 2021, it’s tough to find a sports league without some connection to crypto. NBA team Portland Trail Blazers recently announced apartnershipwith crypto cashback app StormX. Earlier in the year, Miami HEAT signed an exclusive naming rights deal with crypto exchange FTX, renaming its home stadium the “FTX Arena.” The 19-year deal was worth a massive $135 million. Following this, FTX signed the biggest sports sponsorship in crypto to date when itpartneredwith Major League Baseball in a five-year deal on Jun. 23.
Those involved in sponsorship deals see a lot of potential in marketing crypto services to sports fans. Commenting on the deal with FTX, MLB Chief Revenue Officer Noah Garden said:
“Our fans have been early adopters in using new technologies to engage with our game.”
Crypto exchanges and payment providers have made up the bulk of sports sponsorships, highlighting substantial crossover between sports fans and cryptocurrency adoption. Sports teams are starting to allow ticketpurchaseswith cryptocurrencies, with MLB team Oakland A’s offering a full season suite for one Bitcoin earlier this year.
Sports organizations could also see crypto sponsorships as a much-needed opportunity to attract younger fans. According to a 2017studyfrom the Sports Business Journal, the average MLB fan is now 57 years old.
The Rise of NFTs In Sports
Blockchain technology is also adding value for sports fans in the form of collectible NFTs.
NFTs are non-fungible tokens, a type of asset that allows creators to tokenize digital art, collectibles, or any other kind of asset on the Internet. NFTs have enhanced collectibles, as the blockchain technology behind them allows for provable ownership and scarcity.
The NBA has been one of the most successful organizations to utilize NFTs thanks to its involvement in the digital collectible card platform NBA Top Shot. Built on the FLOW blockchain, the game allows users to buy, sell, and trade NBA “moments” and keep them stored on the blockchain in digital wallets.
The platform has seen massive success in 2021, reaching over one million users in May. The secondary market for Top Shot is also attracting big investors, with a rare LeBron James moment selling for $387,600 in April.
Over in Europe, soccer is also benefiting from the NFT craze. The Fantasy soccer game Sorare has attracted several licensing partnerships from major European teams, including Real Madrid andAC Milan. In the game, players act as managers, assembling teams of soccer player NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. Teams are then ranked based on the performance of their players on the real-world soccer pitch, just like traditional fantasy soccer.
NFTs on Sorare are also selling for eye-watering amounts, but not quite as high as NBA Top Shots. In March, a one-of-a-kindCristiano Ronaldo NFTsold for $290,000.
WOW! 🚀 Congratulations to FC Camembert who has just smashed our #Sorare Market record.
The Unique 2020-21 Cristiano Ronaldo card was bought for $289920 on the Transfer Market. #OwnYourGame ⚽️
Season: 2020-2021
Serial: 1/1
Price: $289920 pic.twitter.com/unLS9aXaN1
— Sorare (@SorareHQ) March 14, 2021
Digital collectibles are not the only way sports organizations are using NFTs. Mark Cuban, entrepreneur and owner of the NBA team Dallas Mavericks, plans to turn game tickets into NFTs. Speaking on theDelphi Podcastin March, Cuban said:
“We want to be able to find ways so that not only can our consumers, our fans, buy tickets and resell them, but we continue to make a royalty on them.”
Cuban hopes that using NFTs can accommodate fans who might want to sell high-demand games from their season tickets while at the same time allowing the Mavericks to profit from the sale.
Fan Involvement With Sports Teams
In some cases, the sports teams themselves are moving onto the blockchain.
The tokenized sports exchange Chiliz offers sports teams the ability to create fan tokens, allowing fans to purchase a part of their favorite teams on Socios.com. Owners of fan tokens can vote on key decisions affecting clubs while also gaining access to VIP rewards, promotions, and other unique experiences. Italian team Juventus FC was the first to produce a fan token on the Chiliz platform in 2019. Since then, several soccer and esports teams have held Fan Token Offerings, including UEFA Cup winners FC Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain FC.
FC Barcelona is proud to announce a global partnership with blockchain platform @chiliz & @socios. Using the digital currency $CHZ, you’ll soon be able to buy Barça Fan Tokens, which give you the right to vote in club polls & earn rewards https://t.co/2NOhfsHV8i pic.twitter.com/a5GhCCo717
— FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona) February 13, 2020
Presently, the global sports sponsorship market isexpectedto reach almost $90 billion by 2027. As the sports industry embraces cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, this figure could rise exponentially in the coming years.
Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this feature owned BTC and ETH.
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Digital avatar developer, Genies, has raised $65 million to build an NFT marketplace for digital avatars on the Flow blockchain led by several heavyweight investors, including Flow’s developers, Dapper Labs.
SEC filings dated May 3 reveal the California-based company recently closed a $65 million Series B funding round led by investment firm Bond, alongside Coinbase Ventures, Tull Investment Group, Breyer Capital, and Dapper Labs.
The $65 million is slated to fund the development of Genies’ NFT Marketplace, which will allow users to create and trade tokenized avatars, in addition NFT clothing worn by the avatars. Genies expects to launch its marketplace in beta during the third quarter of this year.
In a tweet revealing the funding, Genies stated it hopes to become the single “virtual portable identity across the digital world,” offering users a means to express themselves within the virtual metaverse.
Genies launched in 2017, initially targeting for its avatars to be used on centralized social media and messaging platforms. On April 29, Genies announced it would be teaming up with Dapper Labs to launch a Genies marketplace on the Flow blockchain.
Move over NBA Top Shot @dapperlabs has a new pet project. The Genies Marketplace is on track for a beta release this summer⚡️https://t.co/Oui29g1sqa
— GENIES (@genies) April 28, 2021
In an interview with VentureBeat’s gaming division, Genies’ CEO, Akash Nigam, noted the firm is transitioning to target a broader audience after initially planning to offer celebrities customized avatars to use in the context of digital events and launches.
Nigam stated the platform will host simple and intuitive tools allowing kids as young as six to “create their own digital wearable and goods collection and then release it in the marketplace and sell to the masses as well.”
In March, Genies released a series of NFTs in March commemorating pro-soccer player Mesut Ozil’s move from Arsenal F.C to Galatasaray in the firm’s first foray into nonfungible tokens. The tokens were auctioned on Nifty Gateway, with Genies selling out of 518 tokens for $670 each, or roughly $347,000.
Nonfungible token studio, House of Kibaa, has announced an auction of three “Legendary” NBA Top Shot NFTs depicting slam dunks from renowned pro basketball player, LeBron James.
The auction will be hosted in partnership with Heritage Auctions, and will run from May 6 until May 20. The three NFTs will be auctioned off as a single collection. Each of the tokens were released during the first season of NBA Top Shot and are of Legendary scarcity — the rarest tokens that Top Shot collectors can own.
NBA Top Shot has exploded in popularity since launching its closed beta in June 2020, and transition to open beta three months later.
By March 2021, Top Shot had generated more than $230 million in gross sales. According to CryptoSlam, Top Shot’s secondary peer-to-peer marketplace hosts more than $1.8 million worth of trades daily, according to a 30-day rolling average, with Legendary tokens having fetched six-figure prices in recent months.
House of Kibaa spokesperson, T.C. Lau, described the offering as “the largest auction sale in NBA Top Shot history,” noting that each of the tokenized moments have serial numbers that “hold a great significance to the late Los Angeles Lakers star, Kobe Bryant.” The tokens to be auctioned boast the serial numbers #26, #41, and #42.
The #26 token depicts James’ iconic “Kobe Bryant Tribute Dunk” on February 6, in which James performed the same “break away, reverse windmill, two-handed slam dunk” popularized by Bryant roughly 19 years beforehand in the same arena.
The #26 serial number also invokes the date of Bryant’s death — January 26, 2020. The announcement notes the #26 serial will never again exist in circulation for a Kobe Tribute NBA Top Shot moment.
A #3 serial Legendary token depicting the same tribute dunk from the same series set a new record for the most expensive NBA Top Shot moment sold after it was auctioned for $387,600 on April 16.
The #42 NFT depicts Lebron leading the Lakers to their 17th championship in the 2020 NBA championship finals. The win saw the Lakers secure their first championship since Bryant won his fifth and final NBA title with the team roughly a decade beforehand, with James having promised to deliver the victory in honor of Bryant’s legacy. Bryant would have been aged #42 at the time, adding significance to the NFT’s serial.
The last token up for auction boasts the #41 serial and was the first Legendary LeBron NFT minted by Top Shot. The NFT depicts a dunk performed by James two days before he and Bryant were photographed together at the following Lakers game. Bryant was aged 41 at the time the dunk was performed.
The auction will be ongoing during the May 15 ceremony for Kobe Bryant’s posthumous induction into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
NBA Top Shot maker Dapper Labs has secured about $305 million in new funding round from investors.
According to a report by Business Insider on Tuesday, past and present NBA stars like Michael Jordan, Alex Caruso, and Kevin Durant participated in the funding round. Other investors included The Chernin Group and Will Smith’s venture capital outfit Dreamers VC.
With this latest funding round, Dapper Labs now reportedly holds a $2.6 billion valuation. As previously reported by Cointelegraph, NBA Top Shot had grossed $230 million in sales as of the end of February.
According to a Dapper Labs spokesperson quoted by Business Insider, March trading figures have seen NBA Top Shot’s total gross reach $483 million with more than 802,000 users on the platform.
Indeed, the NBA Top Shot boom is part of the current interest surrounding non fungible tokens, or NFTs. Earlier in March, an NFT collector reportedly refused a $1 million offer for an NBA Top Shot NFT originally acquired for $100,000 back in January.
Commenting on the platform’s success, Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou remarked:
“NBA Top Shot is successful because it taps into basketball fandom — it’s a new and more exciting way for people to connect with their favorite teams and players.”
Following the success of NBA Top Shot, Gharegozlou says Dapper Labs is looking to extend the “same magic” to other sports franchises. Back in February 2020, Dapper Labs inked a deal with mixed martial arts promoter Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).
Dapper Labs also created CryptoKitties, one of the first NFT projects to gain mass appeal in the crypto space. During the height of the CryptoKitties craze, the digital cats breeding game became the largest Ethereum-based decentralized application.
Meanwhile, NFTs are seemingly becoming more mainstream with Saturday Night Live recently presenting a rap sketch to explain the new digital collectible phenomena in their usual satirical tone.
The startup behind NBA Top Shot raises $305 million in the latest funding round.
Dapper Labs Announces $305 Million in New Funding
The NFT craze seems to be showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon as according to a recent report by Business Insider, Dapper Labs – the startup behind virtual trading-card platform NBA Top Shot – has closed a whopping $305 million funding round.
Notably, the funding round was led by investment firm Coatue, and witnessed participation from popular personalities such as Michael Jordan, current NBA players such as Kevin Durant, Alex Caruso, Klay Thompson, and Andre Iguodala.
In addition, Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures, Will Smith’s Dreamers VC, 2 Chainz, Venrock, The Chernin Group, and USV also participated in the funding round, the reports reads.
It is worthy of mention that post the latest funding round, Dapper Labs’ total valuation now stands at $2.6 billion, a source privy to the matter told Business Insider.
The popularity of the firm’s NBA Top Shot platform has exploded in popularity on the heels of the current NFT mania that has developed a firm grip across the mainstream culture. NBA Top Shots was developed in collaboration with the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association. The platform’s marketplace – the Top Shot marketplace – allows fans to collect and trade officially licensed basketball highlight clips called “moments.”
For the uninitiated, since its launch in October 2020, NBA Top Shots has attracted more than 802,000 users and logged $483 million in total sales. At present, the platform witnesses millions of dollars worth of moments change hands each day.
The spectacular financial success has forced Dapper Labs to expand its offering to other sports leagues. According to the report, in early 2020, Dapper Labs unveiled plans to develop digital collectibles for UFC.
Commenting on the development, Roham Gharegozlou, noted:
“NBA Top Shot is successful because it taps into basketball fandom – it’s a new and more exciting way for people to connect with their favorite teams and players.”
Adding:
“We want to bring the same magic to other sports leagues as well as help other entertainment studios and independent creators find their own approaches in exploring open platforms.”
