A look at a very unique situation on NBA Top Shot, and how the team handled it.
On the 10th of February, 2023, NBA Top Shot announced a challenge in which collectors could unlock a Donovan Mitchell Moment. So long as they had the required Moments and submitted them for the Challenge. But this challenge wasn’t easy — it had some steep requirements. Unless collectors did the “Cheat Code”, it required them to burn 3 Moments that were either in the Rare tier or from Series 1.
Four days after it was announced, the Challenge had wrapped up. Due to the hard requirements, the final number of successful completions came in at 308 people. Making it a very scarce Moment. The community eagerly awaited for these Donovan Mitchell Moments to be distributed, as is typical for challenge rewards.
Unfortunately, something went wrong.
Today, I want to talk about what happened. Hopefully offering insight into why the issue was not an easy nor obvious one to resolve, but also covering how the Top Shot team managed to do just that.
The Challenge Begins
At the time of the Challenge finishing and the rewards being distributed, the community didn’t know what had happened. All they knew was that some collectors had received their Donovan Mitchell Moments, but not all of them. NBA Top Shot went into a brief maintenance period, letting the community know they were looking into the issue. Shortly after, it was revealed that “a mistake was made with the minting and distribution of Donovan Mitchell’s The Challenge: Champion Reward Moment”.
The website and Marketplace were re-opened, whilst the already distributed Michell Moments were “locked”. This meant they couldn’t be purchased, listed for sale, or gifted on the NBA Top Shot platform.
The community eagerly awaited an update. It was clear not enough of the Moments had been minted, but how would it be resolved? There was currently 105 Moments minted of this Donovan Mitchell edition, but there were 308 collectors that were owed one. That’s not an easy situation to be in.
What Can They Do?
Could they give impacted collectors compensation? Could they distribute Dapper Credit or packs? It’s something that NBA Top Shot has done in unique cases in the past. But then the question is, how? With 105 Moments minted, that left 203 collectors empty handed. Even if they were given Dapper credit, not all of them would be able to get a Donovan Mitchell Moment. If they gave them other packs, how do they balance what packs they give to not make it unfair for someone who got the Mitchell Moment but still “make up” for them not getting it? It sort of becomes a lose-lose situation. In any outcome, someone is left without what they would have expected to get. Compensation just doesn’t really work out very well when 70% of the collectors who completed the challenge are impacted.
Ok then, couldn’t they just mint more Moments into that Edition? No, they literally couldn’t. The Moments were minted and released as “Limited Edition” (LE), not as “Circulating Count” (CC). This difference of LE vs CC basically meant the Moment had finished minting. Even if the team wanted to mint more Moments into this Edition, they literally couldn’t because that’s how the Top Shot platform was intentionally set-up.
Well, what if they just made a “new” version of the Moment and then distributed that? This option has potential to work — but then how could the team make it “fair”? The mis-mint Moment would still be the bottleneck (aka the lowest mint count) for the set, and everyone who got the first mint of this play also getting the second one feels unfair. Likewise, if the play is minted twice, isn’t that going to be confusing to collectors, especially new ones? It just doesn’t feel right. And of course, the team couldn’t do anything to return the Moments already distributed, as they were in collectors accounts and therefore owned by them.
There’s Always A Way
But, the Top Shot team came up with a plan that would allow the best of both worlds. They would re-release the play in a new Moment Edition, declaring the last one a “mis-mint”.The first time we’ve ever seen a move like this from the team. They explained that this first, mis-mint Moment would not count towards a complete “Champion” Set”. Instead, only the new, correctly minted Moment would count.
Collectors who had received one of the 105 Donovan Mitchell Moments could choose to burn the Moment they had received, out of 105, and would then be eligible for the second, new edition of that play. Anyone who decided to do this would receive it at the same time as the 200 Collectors that hadn’t got a Moment in the first distribution, meaning they would also get a chance at a random serial number..
The NBA Top Shot team was very upfront and forward with this situation. They provided clear communication via this blog post on what collectors needed to do, and made sure to let fans know in both Discord and Twitter.
To keep things fair, the collectors who received the /105 mis-mint Moment were given 1 week to either burn their Moment or choose to keep it. The choice was entirely up to them. It was an interesting concept — If you’re holding the first Moment, you know it’s going to be a smaller mint count than the second Moment. And, you know it will always be quite a unique Moment, sort of being the first ever “official” mis-mint. But, if you do trade it in, you get a Moment that is required to complete the Champion Set and you get another chance at the serial number lottery. Both sides have upsides, meaning it’s hard to know for sure what you would do in this situation — but it’s fun to think about!
Wrapping Things Up
Once the week had wrapped up, the newly minted edition of the play was distributed. 5 collectors had chosen to trade in and burn the mis-mint Moment. Meaning the final counts were as follows:
- “Correct” Moment — 208 Moments, 0 burned.
- “Mis-Mint” Moment — 100 Moment, 5 burned.
The Top Shot team have made it clear that in the future, this mis-mint Moment won’t count towards completing the relevant Set. To help make this even clearer, the team did two things:
- Created new Set Art
- Updated the Moment description
For number 1, you can easily see the art change look at the comparison of the two Moment thumbnails shown above. Furthermore, let’s see it below in all its glory:
This is just such a fun and good way to handle the set art. It clearly shows it’s not the “correct” Moment, whilst adding to the uniqueness of this Moment.
For number 2, you can see the Moment description here. It’s pretty much identical to the “new” version of the play, other than the opening line which reads like:
“THIS MOMENT IS A MIS-MINT. A Mis-Mint is a Moment with the incorrect mint count that has been re-minted with a corrected mint count.”
The Community Response
You can’t deny that these changes make it fairly clear it’s a mis-mint, whilst still making it feel cool and fun to own. Effectively, the Top Shot team had managed to find a way to “get around” this prickly situation, without pissing off the collectors who had already received the challenge reward. The response from the community was very positive! Collectors applauded the team for taking a unique and thoughtful approach to the situation. Whilst also acting fast to get this updated plan explained and presented very quickly.
I think it’s cool to see how platforms and teams navigate these situations in Web3. The beauty and benefits of the Blockchain technology — transparency, composability, ownership — can sometimes create different hurdles and unique roadblocks. How this situation would be resolved on an older Web2 platform vs on an innovative, industry defining, Web3 platform is very different. Hats off to the Top Shot team that figured out a solution that made more or less everyone happy in a situation where that seemed impossible!
As for myself, I’ll see you in the next article when I’m back with the week in review across Dapper Sports!