NBA Top Shot takes sports collecting to the next level — only on Flow

First-of-its-kind officially-licensed NBA experience comes out of private beta with over $2 million in pack sales and tens of thousands of trades on the secondary market

Roham Gharegozlou
Dapper Labs
5 min readOct 1, 2020

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Our biggest launch ever: NBA Top Shot is open to the public!

High flying dunks. No look dimes. Game saving blocks. The level of drama and skill in NBA basketball is simply unmatched in the sports world. Now you can own a piece of that action.

The NBA, NBPA, and Dapper Labs have teamed up to create NBA Top Shot, a revolutionary new experience in which jaw-dropping plays and unforgettable highlights become collectibles that you can own forever.

To get started: nbatopshot.com

What is NBA Top Shot?

NBA Top Shot is a fully-licensed NBA experience for collectors and gamers. For the first time ever, NBA fans can truly own a piece of the action — and trade with friends for real money in a new kind of hoops economy.

Your first three steps in NBA Top Shot are: pack drops, challenges, and the peer-to-peer marketplace. Let’s go!

Pack Drops

NBA Top Shots are sold in packs: limited edition, sold for a limited time. Once a pack is sold out, the only way to get the NBA Top Shots in it is on the peer-to-peer marketplace. Packs give fans the fun and mystery of the unknown — as well as the delight and social sharability of the pack opening experience.

Packs come in different editions which themselves can be common, rare, or legendary. Different pack editions can have varying numbers and types of moments inside.

E.g.: the first Western Conference Finals packs go on sale at 12pm PT TODAY with the hottest Moments from round 3 of the battle for the “best of the west”: big time plays like Lakers center Dwight Howard flying in for the big swat, or Nuggets guard Jamal Murray draining the deep 3 in crunch time 🔥

  • Pack cost: $29
  • Total packs available: 8991 (time-limited*)
  • 8 moments per pack: 1x rare Western Conference Finals, 7x Base Set

As you might have guessed, that makes the Western Conference Finals pack a rare pack (because every pack contains a rare moment).

You never know exactly what you’re going to get until you open a pack —that’s part of the fun! And yes: you can now keep packs unopened and soon you’ll be able to trade sealed packs on the marketplace too.

*Any rare Moments still in unsold Western Conference Finals packs at 12 PM PDT, October 4, 2020 will be removed from sale and destroyed.

Challenges

A way for collectors to unlock content that’s never available in packs, Challenges come in different shapes and sizes too.

When you visit the challenges page, you’ll be able to see which challenges are currently running as well as your current progress towards each. Click in to see the full details about which Moments are required, then find those missing Moments in packs (while supplies last) or on the marketplace where you can buy from other collectors! Make sure that you’re collecting the exact Moment (same play and set) that’s required for the challenge.

Once you have all the Moments, your job is simple: hold on to them until the challenge countdown timer expires and BOOM you get your reward – something only given to the most patient of collectors (details).

Peer-to-Peer Marketplace

If you hoop heads don’t get what you want in packs, you can always buy/sell in the marketplace to prune your collection and make some cash.

A global, open, peer-to-peer, always-on marketplace adds liquidity and value to everyones’ collection. There are always going to be BIG sales on the marketplace, with LeBron seemingly always leading the pack:

LBJ legendary acquired for $3800; originally in $230 Cosmic pack

But the greatest volume of sales are at price points accessible to many:

NBA Top Shot marketplace sales during beta on Flow

The magic of all this is every single transaction on the marketplace happens within seconds: everything related to authenticity and payments is automatically taken care of by Flow, no need to rely on rating agencies.

Here are two awesome community resources to dig deeper:

Beginner’s guide to NBA Top Shot by cryptoed

Hold up, what’s Flow?

The reason each individual moment in NBA Top Shot has value and can be traded with anyone else on the marketplace is because its authenticity and scarcity is secured by a new blockchain: Flow.

Flow is a fast, decentralized, and developer-friendly blockchain, designed as the foundation for a new generation of games, apps, and the digital assets that power them.

For creators, developers, and artists, Flow opens up new business models and organic ways to engage and reward communities. For users, applications built on Flow offer portable data, real ownership of digital assets, and the opportunity to share in the value they help create.

Flow was developed by Dapper Labs, the creators of some of the most successful blockchain applications to date including CryptoKitties.

To learn more about building on Flow, visit docs.onflow.org.

In addition to over 6000 smart contracts and nearly 3000 projects already deployed on the Flow developer Playground, Flow has had a lot of amazing news recently. Check out everyone joining NBA on this new network:

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Roham Gharegozlou
Dapper Labs

Founder @AxiomZenTeam, CryptoKitties, and Dapper Labs. Former VC. Relentless optimist. https://axiomzen.com