A little over a year ago, on October 16, 2020, Dapper Labs launched the open beta of NBA Top Shot into a very different world. “Crypto” was seen as almost exclusively about currency back then — ”NFT” was a niche term, “Metaverse” was not yet on most radars, Web3 was in its infancy.

Everything is different now. NBA Top Shot itself has grown more than 100x — from ~10k signups and ~1k active users this week last December to over a million signups and ~150k active users last week. We’re now taking our work to the next level with NBA Top Shot (2022 roadmap) and starting to roll out the new NFL All Day, with UFC and La Liga close behind!

We’ve seen the community of Web3 developers building on Flow (flow.com) increase by 100x too: from a handful of early builders to thousands of pioneering teams, many who are also participating in the governance, technical development, and infrastructure of the network as well.

Flow Fam Just Built Different

Although we’ve seen awesome growth, the vibe of the Flow builder community has stayed authentic and community-focused.

The community comes from all walks of life, but we’re all here for similar reasons: we know that it’s inevitable that life is increasingly digital, and that Web3 is a one-time opportunity to lay the earliest building blocks of the open Metaverse.

An open Metaverse means that the software governing our digital lives will be transparent and run on public blockchains, not private servers: accessible to anyone, trusted by everyone, and controlled by the people that use it — not the people that made it.

Here is some recent news from pioneers building in the Flow community today, starting with a quick highlight on several PFP projects battling it out:

• NFT Genius launched Ballerz on Monday, over $3M in secondary sales volume in its first week on Gaia (ongaia.com)— the first NFT marketplace powered by Dapper!
• Flovatar is close behind, with an interactive, collaborative avatar-making experience accessible to anyone. Over $1M in primary sales in $FLOW — minting is still open but there are also deals to be had on the marketplace!
• The first PFP on Flow is Hoodlums, by Sturdy.Exchange. Also launched recently, Hoodlums brings an awesome aesthetic and passionate community to the space — we’re excited to see the growth here!

That’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Flow community, which also includes fast-growing startups as well as established companies committed to doing the right thing for their customers:

• YouTube chose Flow as their first NFT minting platform, giving gifts to their top creators that are starting to make the rounds on the social web:

Flow on Twitter: "😻 Looking good @DashieXP! @flow_blockchain 💜 @YouTube Flow is an environmentally-safe platform built for consumer-friendly NFTs and Web3 apps -- we're proud to be @YouTube's choice! https://t.co/nu7GAZSFRz / Twitter"

😻 Looking good @DashieXP! @flow_blockchain 💜 @YouTube Flow is an environmentally-safe platform built for consumer-friendly NFTs and Web3 apps -- we're proud to be @YouTube's choice! https://t.co/nu7GAZSFRz

• Genies Warehouse is now live on Flow mainnet, limited to a hand-picked early access group (TechCrunch). Genies also recently announced a partnership with UMG’s entire artist roster as well as WMG virtuoso Nessa Barrett!

AK 👽🅰️ Nigam on Twitter: "(1/6) Today we debut The Warehouse, our avatar nft wearable marketplace focused on gen z cultural virtual identity for the masses. Prioritizing long term impact over short term capital gain. This is, and has always been, about the power of an avatar. https://t.co/84AaIgb3e5 / Twitter"

(1/6) Today we debut The Warehouse, our avatar nft wearable marketplace focused on gen z cultural virtual identity for the masses. Prioritizing long term impact over short term capital gain. This is, and has always been, about the power of an avatar. https://t.co/84AaIgb3e5

• Shopify on Flow will be fully self-service thanks to GigLabs, one of the earliest startups that made the switch from Ethereum to Flow. Read more from GigLabs then check out Shopify’s landing page: shopify.com/nft
• Matrix World, the first Metaverse project on Flow, did a very successful $4M+ Flow primary drop, crossed $1M in secondary sales on the Flow BloctoBay NFT marketplace this week, and just announced a partnership with Jay Chou!
• Seussibles is on the AppStore: a mobile-first, mainstream consumer NFT experience featuring the Dr. Seuss universe and expanding to other IPs in the future.
• Rcrdshp continues to impress, building one of the strongest team in the business while crossing $2M in sales in beta with ~170 music artists represented on the platform.
• Versus.Auction, one of the most innovative art NFT platforms in the world, launches collabs with amazing artists including John Orion Young, Ben Mauro, and Alotta Money
• Chainmonsters: One of the most promising and fun NFT games in production today, continues to grow the community organically.
• SportsIcon: Just announced a partnership with Floyd Mayweather himself— as well as an upcoming platform for all college and pro athletes!
• Our long-time partner Animoca built MotoGP and Olympic Pins this year as the foundation for our work building out the sports Metaverse on Flow.
• Alchemy, the leading blockchain developer platform, just launched Web3 University — a fantastic learning resource for everyone wanting to jump into this world.
• Eternal announced its funding round including folks like Mark Cuban, Gary V, and Coinbase in September –– and been executing consistently since then. Get started on eternal.gg!
• Two awesome Flow Naming Service apps have also launched recently: find.xyz with .find as well as FlowNS with .fn!
• Last but not least, Google has started writing about their experience working with Flow –– watch this space!

So many more amazing projects are hard at work building as well, follow FlowVerse and Flow on Twitter for the latest updates.

In closing, here’s a quick video our team made at Dapper Labs highlighting this year’s milestones — we hope you enjoy!

Thank you to our community and team for bringing their best every day and believing in our mission at every step, especially to the creators and fans that make all of this possible.

We’re amped for an incredible year ahead and wishing you all the most wonderful holiday season!!

2021: the Year Web3 and the Open Metaverse Became Inevitable was originally published in Dapper Labs on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Brud is creating community-owned media and collectively-built worlds
–brud.fyi

We’ve had a busy few weeks at Dapper Labs: raising $250M additional capital from the world’s top investors; announcing incredible new partnerships with the NFL and La Liga; welcoming Dwyane Wade and celebrating #HBDTopShot by trending all day on Twitter.

Today I’m proud and grateful to announce the most important move yet: the amazing Brud team, creators of Lil Miquela and expert community builders, are joining Dapper Labs in our first acquisition of a venture-backed company. The Brud team will help launch and scale a new business unit –– Dapper Collectives –– with the mission of bringing decentralized organizations (“DAOs”) to the mainstream.

We’ve been following Trevor, Nicole de Ayora (CPO), and Kara Weber (COO)’s work on virtual influencers and the Metaverse since before CryptoKitties –– it’s an honor to work together today. We’ve also been impressed with Trevor’s work more generally in the decentralized ecosystem, including cofounding the $FWB DAO on Ethereum.

From its inception in 2016 until now, Brud has raised over $27 million in venture capital, principally from Sequoia and Spark Capital. As part of this transaction, these equity holders in Brud will also receive Dapper Labs equity as well as FLOW tokens in certain cases — welcome aboard!

By joining forces and creating Dapper Collectives, we will:

• Bring community ownership and collective building to Dapper Labs products –– starting with Lil Miquela and her 10 million fans;
• Build and release open source tools to help other mainstream communities engage in decentralized ownership and governance on Flow blockchain;
• Help the most forward-thinking “web 2” companies decentralize their operations, engaging at the CEO and Board of Directors level to assist in tokenomics as well as technical implementation.

“We’ve been on a journey to create a completely new way of telling stories, together. Our mission is to change the world through community-owned storytelling. Joining Dapper Labs today allows us to accelerate and expand that mission on the fast-growing Flow blockchain, now home to even more of the world’s most compelling IP. With profound gratitude for our Board, amazing partners, best-in-class investors and longtime supporters, I can’t wait for the adventure ahead with the most amazing team in the world.”
– Trevor McFedries, CEO

We’re Hiring!

cdixon.eth on Twitter: "Why Web 3 matters 🧵 / Twitter"

Why Web 3 matters 🧵

Flow, the blockchain that powers NBA Top Shot, was built for mainstream applications of all kinds, of which NFT marketplaces are one subset.

We believe decentralized organizations will underpin the next wave of blockchain-enabled consumer applications because they enable a feature that has never existed before: shared governance of digital systems — whether of virtual storylines, ecosystem fund treasuries, NFT economies, or full-scale blockchain games.

From the very first day of Dapper Labs, our DNA has been as a multi-product company: we built NBA Top Shot as part of our studio, the underlying Flow blockchain, and the Dapper wallet payment systems all at the same time. That’s because we have a structure of interdisciplinary teams empowered to own their missions.

Dapper Collectives is a new business unit empowered to further the Brud mission of creating community-owned media and collectively-built worlds.

The team will have creative independence to do what they do best –– while being able to rely on the infrastructure and expertise of the Dapper Labs mother organization. In particular: a Fortune 500-caliber executive suite across legal as well as compliance, growth, infrastructure, and security –– not to mention 1.2 million Dapper Wallet users.

If all this sounds as exciting to you as it does to us, get in touch and let’s work together!

• https://dapperlabs.com/careers
• jobs@brud.fyi

Historical Context

Blockchain technology isn’t just a more efficient way to settle securities — it will fundamentally change market structures — and maybe even the architecture of the internet itself.
 — Abigail Johnson, CEO of Fidelity Investments

On the 23rd of May 2017 when Abigail Johnson was first quoted saying this, blockchains were principally thought as digital ledgers built to secure cryptocurrencies.

At around the same time, our team, led by current Dapper Labs CTO Dieter Shirley, realized that the same technology used to secure cryptocurrencies (“fungible tokens”) could be used to secure digital assets that are individually unique (“non-fungible tokens”, or NFTs). On September 20 2017, we submitted the first draft of the NFT standard to Ethereum. Two months later, on November 28, we shipped CryptoKitties.

Today, nearly four years after the initial launch of CryptoKitties, not only are cryptocurrencies much more accepted by the mainstream–– and a $2T+ asset class ––– “NFT” actually out-ranks “cryptocurrency” on Google Trends, with all the world’s top brands working through how to engage.

Even today, we are only scratching the surface of how blockchain will “change the architecture of the internet itself”. This is because blockchains are a new kind of computer, one that we’re still learning what kinds of apps we can build on top:

Dieter Shirley 🌊 on Twitter: "A blockchain is a computer that anyone can use, everyone can trust, and no-one can shut down or block.The fact that such a computer can be used to build decentralized financial systems is worth getting excited about, but that's only the beginning... / Twitter"

A blockchain is a computer that anyone can use, everyone can trust, and no-one can shut down or block.The fact that such a computer can be used to build decentralized financial systems is worth getting excited about, but that's only the beginning...

I like adding “public computer” to Dieter’s definition above –– as distinguished from the private servers operated by today’s large internet infrastructure companies. By the way: designed the right way, private companies like Google can join public networks like Flow without compromising decentralization.

Regardless of blockchain, most cryptocurrencies and NFTs built so far are about ownership and value transfer. Many projects take things one step further and use their tokens for access or status within the community, but we’re only starting to scratch the surface of the next step-function benefit blockchain can provide mainstream consumers –– governance.

From the A16Z Crypto Canon:

Crypto protocols are meant to be governed by decentralized communities of stakeholders. Not because it’s more efficient, or important for ideological reasons, but because it’s necessary to unlock their core value proposition: that the underlying protocols will continue to run as designed, and will remain open to anyone who wants to use or build on them, without having the rules shift under their feet.
– Jeff Amico

For more:

• Building Web 3.0 — Invest Like the Best with Patrick O’Shaughnessy
• “Fantasy Hollywood” — Crypto and Community-Owned Characters
• Brud — Using AI to Bridge Real and Virtual Worlds
• Brud, Creators of Virtual Human Lil Miquela, Announce a New Direction
• Follow Trevor @whatdotcd
• Follow Flow @flow_blockchain

The Future of [X] is Decentralized was originally published in Dapper Labs on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Alchemy is the leading blockchain developer platform, powering over $25 billion in transaction volume as well as the majority of NFT and DeFi projects including CryptoKitties.

That’s why I’m so proud and excited Alchemy has chosen Flow as the next public blockchain they will support with their entire developer platform.

Alchemy for Flow will enable all developers, from individuals to enterprises, with the tools and infrastructure they need to create great products bringing blockchain to its next billion stakeholders.

It also means we can get some help with NBA Top Shot, unlocking massive scalability and reliability as the community continues to grow!

It takes a village

Flow was originally developed by Dapper Labs and open sourced in early 2020. It puts into production a new layer one blockchain architecture driven from our learnings building CryptoKitties and other apps on Ethereum.

Less than a year after launch, Flow is the exclusive home of NBA Top Shot, the world’s most popular consumer blockchain product with over 330,000 paid collectors and over $400 million in transaction volume since October 2020. Flow is also home to independent wallets like Blocto, marketplaces like Viv3, and top-tier brands and studios including Moto GP and Animoca.

Alchemy’s entry signals a new chapter: independent developers on Flow can use Alchemy’s tools to get started more easily, while experienced teams need the power of their platform to handle scale or diagnose complex issues.

Alchemy will also support the network as a validator node operator, increasing Flow’s decentralization and joining an illustrious crew led by Samsung and T-Systems / Deutsche Telekom as well as 300+ other validator node operators including NBA players and NFT community members.

All this is exactly what the Flow ecosystem needs with demand from developers going parabolic!

What makes Flow different

The biggest and most convincing benefits of Flow compared to other blockchains for products aimed at mainstream consumers is Flow’s proven ability to onboard, engage, and retain those customers.

Most of NBA Top Shot’s users prefer credit cards over cryptocurrency –– these are the communities the next generation of consumer crypto apps will need to tap into.

In addition to the above, there are three fundamental, foundational technical differences between Flow and basically every other blockchain –– live or in development –– as well as a whole host of small but foundational improvements that make Flow a unique application platform.

1. Multi-node architecture allows scaling with full ACID compliance: almost every other blockchain scales by breaking the network up into smaller networks. Shards, sidechains, “layer two” –– they all complicate both the user- and developer experience. Flow is the only blockchain architecture we’ve seen that allows massive scale while preserving a fully atomic, composable execution environment as well as full decentralization.
2. Resource-oriented programming: smart contracts on Flow are written in Cadence, an easier and safer programming language for crypto assets and apps. Other blockchains talk about “compatibility” using languages that weren’t meant for smart contracts — the reality is anyone who has tried building with Cadence says it’s night and day compared to anything before it. Learn Cadence on Flow Playground.
3. Easy Payments and Onboarding: the Flow Client Library (FCL) means apps don’t have to choose between supporting credit cards or cryptocurrency –– they can easily support both based on their business preferences.

To stay in the loop with updates around Alchemy on Flow, either sign up for the Flow newsletter or open an Alchemy account!

Flow x Alchemy: Blockchain At Internet Scale was originally published in Dapper Labs on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Too many software development teams are still wasting time on administrative work instead of writing code.

ZenHub is building a future where nobody has to “do” project management. Where developers can simply focus on the code without sacrificing organizational clarity into project status.

Today ZenHub announced its first institutional fundraise of $4.7M USD to accelerate this mission led by led by BDC Capital and Ripple Ventures with participation by Adam Gross (former CEO of Heroku), Jiaona Zhang (VP Product at Webflow), and Oji Udezue (VP Product at Calendly).

Until now, ZenHub has been bootstrapped as part of Axiom Zen, the same venture studio that spun out Dapper Labs, the company behind CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shot. As a bootstrapped company ZenHub has grown organically, winning over fast-growing companies like Shopify and open source teams like Docker as well as Fortune 500 stalwarts from Microsoft to Comcast.

ZenHub’s philosophy is that all companies of the future are software companies, and software companies need to treat their developers well if they want to recruit, hire, and retain the best of the best. A big part of treating developers well is letting them use best-in-class products – and minimize context-switching between them.

That’s where automation comes in.

Introducing Automation for ZenHub Teams

While automation is not a novel concept in software development, it rarely makes a meaningful appearance in most project management solutions. Solutions that tout automation often stop at automating tasks for the individual.

ZenHub sees an opportunity to go beyond these simple automations, and offer guided solutions to help teams through the most complex parts of agile development. In essence, making agile more accessible.

ZenHub’s vision for automation is like Tesla’s vision for Autopilot: as a driver you’re always in full control, but there are a number of purpose-built features designed to remove the most burdensome and dangerous parts of driving.

ZenHub can play a similar role in augmenting the most complex and time consuming parts of project management to help teams move faster and become more agile, while allowing them to stay in full control of the process.

Automated Workflows & ZenHub Sprints

ZenHub released Automated Workflows in September 2020, enabling teams to visualize their entire development workflow in a single view and automated the handoff of work between teams.

Today ZenHub introduced the next step in the automation journey: Sprints.

ZenHub Sprints automates one of the most despised rituals of agile development — the sprint planning meeting.

As the first ever sprint planning experience built in GitHub, ZenHub Sprints enables teams to create and schedule multiple sprints at the same time. Sprints also automatically carries over unfinished Issues between sprints!

Coming Up

Next, ZenHub will apply its vision to software estimation, another foundational element of agile development that, like sprint planning, is similarly frustrating and needlessly time-consuming.

As teams become more distributed, we see an opportunity to make estimation a more asynchronous process and help teams focus their attention and discussion on the most contentious Issues.

To learn more, sign up on ZenHub.com or follow on Twitter.

Better Code, Faster: ZenHub Helps the Best Software Teams Stay Focused was originally published in Axiom Zen Team on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“Despite everything, we live in the most incredible of times.
You just need to know how to live it” –– Hackatao (EradiGirl)

HaCKittieZ is our collab with @Hackatao and @AsyncArt to get ultra weird with our furry felines and thrust them into the world of programmable art.🙀 Modify up to 13 traits 👑 Compete for Hackatao's love😻 Bid on any of the these one-of-a-kind cats:https://t.co/iG1QV5HE5n pic.twitter.com/OqFjuLPHBm

Our lives today are increasingly digital, bringing us closer and teasing the possibility of an infinite future––a metaverse free for anyone to explore, play with, and build on.

Almost exactly on queue, crypto or blockchain technology is giving us the building blocks to make this vision a reality: real digital ownership; transparent global markets; permissionless development platforms; and new business models for digital creators.

We started CryptoKitties to highlight what’s possible with blockchain technology beyond just currency. At the end of the day, blockchains are the first public computers, open to be programmed and used by anyone with no need for intermediaries or middlemen. Three years later, people are making the most incredible things –– and the movement is just getting started.

HaCKittieZ is an unprecedented collaboration between top artist duo Hackatao, programmable art platform AsyncArt, and CryptoKitties.

Each “layer” is an individual dynamic artwork that can be changed at will by its owner. The sum of all layers make up the master, a constantly evolving social masterpiece powered by a smart contract that ties everything together:

These pieces of programmable art are living, breathing, and are the sum of their components!

The artist Hackatao themselves will keep control over the seventh layer, the Crown, which they will award on a rolling basis to their favorite user-influenced creation among the other layers. Everything is tracked immutably on the Ethereum blockchain, each art-piece a unique non-fungible token (NFT) that can be traded on any number of digital marketplaces.

Now that I have your attention, there are two ways to get involved:

1. Bid on AsyncArt: Bidding will close on October 24th 10:00 AM PT on all six 1/1 digital art “layers” as well as the master piece — head over now 🚀
2. Breed Purrstige Kitties: Make your own art by breeding limited edition CryptoKitties that can only be bred October 24–31. More details below!

Purrstige What?

In CryptoKitties, there’s a particularly special kind of Cattribute called Purrstige Traits. They’re challenging, rewarding, and create some of CryptoKitties’ coolest looking cats.

Purrstige Traits combine with your Kitty’s own unique genetics to create some of the most distinctive and sought-after kitties in the game. This is a way for anyone to make their own unique digital works of art; no artistic talent necessary!

Join the CryptoKitties Discord and tune in for our livestream Saturday 10AM PT to join the party.

For a detailed guide on how to get started:

Prowling For Purrstige Kitties - CryptoKitties Blog

About the Crew

🎨 The artistic diptych Hackatao was born in Milan in 2007 thanks to Sergio Scalet and Nadia Squarci. “Hack” for the pleasure of going under the skin and discovering what’s hidden inside; “Tao” for Yin and Yang, their creative dynamic balance. Hackatao’s creations have taken crypto art by storm.

📈 AsyncArt is pioneering #ProgrammableArt, digital paintings split into “Layers” which owners can use to affect the overall image. AsyncArt pieces can be programmed to evolve with time, react to their owners’ actions, track public information like the weather or stock prices, or any number of designs that are yet to be explored.

🐱 Three years ago, we wrote the first Non-Fungible Token (NFT) standard and built CryptoKitties to change the narrative of what’s possible with crypto. Since then, 100,000 collectors have given rise to a more than $40 million dollar economy of digital Kitties though trading and breeding. We also operate NBA Top Shot on the Flow Blockchain.

Join Us

• 🐦 Hackatao | AsyncArt | CryptoKitties
• 💬 AsyncArt | CryptoKitties

Presenting HaCKittieZ: Hackatao x AsyncArt x CryptoKitties was originally published in Dapper Labs on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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

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

NEW: After selling more than $2 million in digital basketball cards during its private beta, @dapperlabs' NBA Top Shot is launching to the public. @kalrajs23 reports https://t.co/OyaRIkGPxE

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.

Here is your sneak peek into @nba_topshot Closed Beta where the doc opened up 8 Early Adopter packsShout-outs to @WhippedUpProd for the beats!Full video on my youtube; https://t.co/86AT2ZLWu2#NBATopShot pic.twitter.com/GN7wrnhtiW

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:

🚨 TOP COLLECTOR ALERT 🚨This is 1️⃣ of 4️⃣9️⃣ LeBron James Moments that can ever be minted in our Cosmic packs. Scooped up by user rapid_goji_berry2079 via the #NBATopShot marketplace 📈Start collecting Moments like these before the beta opens! https://t.co/S4XvtARyar 🏀⛓ pic.twitter.com/Lqm8grEIF1

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

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:

The Ultimate Guide to NBA TopShot — digital NBA collectibles on the blockchain

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:

• Blockletes (Turner Sports / Warner Media): https://twitter.com/flow_blockchain/status/1311389261116182531
• Animoca (MotoGP and Star Girl, 1M+ users): https://ledgerinsights.com/animoca-to-bring-a-million-users-to-dapper-labs-blockchain-flow/
• Sumo Digital (a Tencent Company):
  https://www.pocketgamer.biz/news/74642/sumo-leamington-blockchain-projects-with-dapper-labs/
• Blockparty (digital art and collectibles marketplace): https://twitter.com/Blockparty/status/1309552287950557197
• Bitkub (Thailand’s largest cryptocurrency exchange): https://www.newsbtc.com/press-releases/bitkub-and-leading-influencers-announced-fans-fans-token-the-token-designed-for-fans/
• Ubisoft and Warner Music: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2019/09/12/exclusive-from-cryptokitties-to-cardi-b-warner-music-joins-11-million-investment-in-ethereum-replacement/#30ba6eec2b21

NBA Top Shot takes sports collecting to the next level — only on Flow was originally published in Dapper Labs on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

These Limited Edition CryptoKitties are inspired by the immersive, creative, visual world in Simulation Theory, the band’s latest hit album

“Without my music, where would I be
You taught me how to cry and still remain a G”
– Nate Dogg

Music is at once deeply personal and unabashedly social. From band posters on dorm-room walls to Spotify playlists, from t-shirts bought at concerts to autographed LP covers, the music we listen to — and how we choose to show off our fandom — in a lot of ways makes us who we are.

That’s why I’m so excited to present Marty and Mibbles, limited edition CryptoKitties and the first-ever officially-licensed music collectibles on the blockchain. Marty is inspired by Matt Bellamy’s transformation during Muse’s ‘Something Human’ video, while Mibbles depicts the mini-monster who created chaos in the band’s video for ‘Pressure’.

MUSE X CRYPTOKITTIES Excited to announce a world first collaboration with the launch of two limited-edition #SimulationTheory @cryptokitties. Marty and Mibbles are available now https://t.co/2GehiXVEww pic.twitter.com/xO0vGqXUCf

Marty and Mibbles are purely digital creatures: they are born on the blockchain and will live forever. Just like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, fans who get their hands on either Marty or Mibbles can keep them for the kinds (family heirlooms!) or trade them with others for real money.

Unlike cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, each Marty and each Mibbles is individually unique — in other words, they are Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). Each NFT in the collection will be edition-authenticated by the band and will be available in limited quantities.

These two CryptoKitties represent our first collaboration with Muse (whose lead singer, Matt Bellamy, is a Dapper Labs investor) and Warner Music Group, one of the world’s largest music labels and among our closest partners and backers.

What are NFTs?

As NFTs, Marty and Mibbles — and indeed all CryptoKitties — are closer to physical collectibles like trading cards or Beanie Babies than they are to digital stickers or pictures on your camera roll:

CryptoKitties and other NFTs are the building blocks for the MetaVerse, made for a world that’s increasingly digital. Today’s fans need a digital dorm room wall as well as a digital bookshelf — NFTs are an open standard which means anyone can build apps to let users play with them.

Just like a Bitcoin or ETH token, NFTs can be limited edition (digitally scarce), freely tradable, and under the control of their owner. You can buy and sell CryptoKitties on cryptokitties.com — or you can take them to third party marketplaces like Opensea.

NFTs are created and managed by smart contracts that themselves can be made immutable on whatever blockchain they’re based on — that means your NFT benefits from the same security and permanence as the underlying native cryptocurrency asset. CryptoKitties will be around hundreds of years from now, as long as a single individual is running an Ethereum node.

The result of this is the most amazing thing about NFTs: they are open to be built on by any third party company or independent developer around the world, without permission or platform risk.

About the Technology

As with all CryptoKitties, Marty and Mibbles live on the Ethereum blockchain today and will soon have a bridge to travel over to our new blockchain, Flow, and the universe of apps on top.

Muse Kitties will be among the first to receive access.

Flow is a new blockchain network built from the ground up for consumer apps, games, and the digital assets that power them. We believe in an open MetaVerse where anyone can create — and drive value for their creations. Digital assets like NFTs and cryptocurrencies are the fuel that runs through the open worlds people will build on top of Flow.

To learn more, hop into discord.gg/flow and join the movement 🌊

Muse x CryptoKitties: Introducing Marty and Mibbles, the first officially-licensed music NFTs was originally published in Dapper Labs on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

EDIT: We got mucho press 🙏 —awesome interview with our Dr. Seuss partners in Decrypt and articles in TechCrunch, Fortune, VentureBeat!

This one is personal.

My family moved around a lot when I was a kid — awesome in retrospect, but disruptive in the moment. Dr. Seuss was a constant foundation in a sea of shifting realities. Cat in the Hat was always good for a chuckle while quips like “there is no-one alive who is you-er than you” taught me that it’s cool to be weird.

Dr. Seuss stories teach the importance of community as well as individual responsibility. I’m honored to announce we are working in a close partnership with Dr. Seuss Enterprises to bring new kinds of digital products that further these values to life as part of the Flow ecosystem.

Our mission with Flow is to bring about an open and inclusive world that gives every creator, consumer, player, and participant the opportunity to own the value they help create.

The first Flow flagship product, NBA Top Shot (make sure you’re on the waitlist!), is currently running in private beta and showing 20x higher conversion than CryptoKitties (on Ethereum) for mainstream users. This gives us confidence to expand our efforts.

The World of Dr Seuss – on Flow

What an amazing partner for our community.

The Dr. Seuss universe is a vibrant, emotional, and educational part of a billion fans’ lives. His books can be found in every corner of the world with over 700 million copies and counting. The two top grossing Christmas movies of all time both star the Grinch!

I guess we know when we need to launch this by…

Dr. Seuss on Flow lets fans own a piece of the incredible Dr. Seuss universe in a way never before possible — as digital collectibles created and secured with smart contracts on the Flow blockchain.

Fans compete to collect these limited edition Dr. Seuss World items in surprise drops, using them to complete sets that unlock new and hidden exclusive content. If a fan misses out, they have to trade with other fans to complete their collection, building engagement in the ecosystem and pushing fans to broaden their knowledge of the IP universe.

Anything fans own on Flow, they own forever: because Flow is a decentralized network, fans’ collections are permanent in a way that no piece of software could be without crypto. People can keep their collectibles for generations, enjoying and reliving the stories together with their families.

Developers of wallets, apps, and virtual worlds can also build new features directly for owners, benefiting from the power of composability and interoperability possible on Flow. This is the long-term value of blockchain and blockchain assets.

Dr. Seuss joins an amazing family of brands and partners we have already announced on Flow: NBA and NBPA as well as the UFC, Warner Music, Ubisoft, and Animoca to name a few — as well as an expanded universe for CryptoKitties anyone can play in.

More than 1,000 builders are part of the Flow community: including nearly 400 in our Open World Builders program (featuring NBA Nets’ Spencer Dinwiddie as well as famed venture capitalist Fred Wilson) and nearly 100 products in the works from venture-funded startups or Fortune 500 organizations. Over 2,000 projects have been created on the Flow Playground, one of the easiest ways to get started with blockchain development.

About Flow Blockchain

Flow is a new crypto network designed for consumer applications that need massive scale as well as excellent user experience. Flow is based on a novel, multi-role validator node architecture that allows the network to scale without breaking composability or compromising decentralization. Flow also introduces Cadence, a new resource-oriented programming language that dramatically reduces the effort and risk of developing smart contracts. Flow and Cadence were developed by the Dapper Labs team driven by experience building some of the most popular blockchain apps in the world, including CryptoKitties and Dapper wallet.

To learn more and join our community:

• 🐦 twitter.com/flow_blockchain
• 🐦 twitter.com/DrSeussWorld
• 💬 discord.gg/flow
• 🛠 onflow.org/flow-alpha

Dr. Seuss digital collectibles on Flow, by the creators of CryptoKitties was originally published in Dapper Labs on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Team,

The events of the past few days have sent shockwaves across the planet as people across the world recognize and internalize how oppression, systemic racism, and injustice have impacted Black communities in America. This has given us a moment to pause and think about the world we want to live in. Kaizen is a core value across Axiom Zen, Dapper Labs, and ZenHub, and we hope each person brings this mentality not only to work, but to their life.

Black lives matter. We may not have control over the whole world, but we can have an outsized impact in our corner. In addition to sharing a message of solidarity, we want to use action to inspire others in the community.

Our plan begins with listening and learning. This has to be core to every one of our initiatives.

We are listening to the diverse team we already have — and being real with ourselves that we still lack diversity across many areas. Now that we’re less constrained by geography when it comes to hiring and interviewing, we can act fast to make sure we have a set of voices around the table that’s representative of our whole planet. As individuals, we are also making more time to reflect, to mentor, to reach out and help those that are less fortunate.

We will also do what we can to provide immediate financial support. CryptoKitties will donate all breeding and marketplace fees in this breeding window to support social justice funds to be decided by team suggestions. NBA Top Shot will work with Black, Indigenous, and People of Color artists to create real revenue streams for their work in new mediums.

We will also do more to elevate and amplify diversity in the blockchain community. At least 20% of ecosystem development funds for the Flow network will be used to increase accessibility and opportunity for the least advantaged.

As we grow, we expect to make mistakes, fall down, get back up, and learn. Keep us as a leadership team accountable to our promises here. Educate each other. Be active in shining a light on diverse voices and opinions.

Let’s shape the future we want to live in.

Listening and Learning was originally published in Dapper Labs on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Ali Yahya, partner at Andreessen Horowitz’ crypto fund, posted an awesome thread on some of his thinking supporting @withflow_ this morning:

Ali Yahya on Twitter

One view in crypto is that a single blockchain (like Bitcoin or Ethereum) will someday emerge victorious and proceed to dominate all use cases. I disagree. It's more likely that many networks will emerge as winners in their own subdomains of the crypto sphere A monster thread 👇

Business of Crypto Apps

We describe Flow as a decentralized, permissionless network built to support a new generation of games, apps, and the digital assets that power them.

This new generation of applications can have successful, community-driven business models by using crypto-assets, whether fungible cryptocurrencies or utility tokens or non-fungible collectibles:

Ali Yahya on Twitter

And, because crypto-assets make it possible to directly capture some of the value that is created by open source, this vision is economically sustainable and self-reinforcing in a way that open source alone has never been.

Crypto incentives unlock new business models that the industry has only started to explore.

Within games and entertainment, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are the most interesting building block to date in terms of business models.

Just like any token or cryptocurrency, NFTs can have their scarcity, ownership, and provenance secured on the blockchain. They can be traded globally using decentralized exchanges, and any developer can build functionality for them without taking platform risk.

However unlike any cryptocurrency, NFTs can be individually unique, each a special, indivisible, snowflake.

Starting with CryptoKitties and the ERC-721 standard conceived by our CTO Dieter Shirley, millions of NFTs have already been bought and sold within the small but active dapp community, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in market volume, mostly on peer-to-peer, decentralized networks.

New types of content and business models are being developed and tested as we speak. Within Dapper Labs’ small but mighty distributed team alone:

• Cheeze Wizards tests new concepts including a business model around NFTs with consumable value — in this case magic that can be passed on from vanquished to victor, Highlander-style. Cheeze Wizards is also a demonstration of what composability could look like, with amazing projects from its recent hackathon.
• Earlier this summer we partnered with the Fabricant and Johanna Jaskowska, one of the biggest designers on Instagram, to design and auction off iridescence, the world’s first digital clothing as an NFT on the Ethereum blockchain. Iridescence sold for $9,500 at the Ethereal Summit in New York.
• Our biggest project yet is NBA Top Shot. We’re working directly with the NBA and NBPA to represent the greatest moments in basketball history as limited edition collectibles that fans can use for games and real-world benefits. Fans: sign up for updates and follow the action on Twitter:

Nasir Jones on Twitter

@NBA and @TheNBPA and @Dapper_Labs are working directly with basketball fans to shape the sport's digital future. What NBA moment will you own in @NBA_TopShot? https://t.co/Vh8oX0yj3O

Future of Open Source

Because this new generation of crypto-enabled applications is always openly accessible, they can be leveraged by other developers with very little friction. We call this composability or open ecosystems; others have written about this recently as open gardens as well.

Once the smart contract within a crypto-enabled application is deployed, it’s an open service, accessible to anyone, anywhere: no APIs to maintain, no platform risk for third parties to worry about.

Denis Nazarov, partner at Andreessen Horowitz and previously cofounder of mediachain has written previously about open services here:

Denis Nazarov on Twitter

I wrote a post on open source and crypto: - the differences between software tools and services - how the stateful nature of software services led them to be closed - how crypto networks can catalyze new open services that reignite innovation https://t.co/R7VTw3qAaU

Open services compound just like open source, but the compounding is likely to be exponential for two reasons:

1. Open services share data and state as well as code and
2. The value flowing through the system in the form of crypto-assets makes building a business model much easier.

Open services add value to businesses and everyday consumers because “anyone can build on anything” leads inexorably to more opportunity for innovation and consumer choice. In open worlds, platforms have less power because anyone can tap into the shared state of the network. The end result will be content creators and consumers capture more value.

Designing for Open Worlds

Flow is designed for a world where composability can be the norm for every application, at massive consumer scale:

Ali Yahya on Twitter

The @dapper_labs team has conceived of an architecture for a blockchain wherein the separation of labor between nodes is vertical (across the different validation stages for each transaction) rather than horizontal (across different transactions, as with sharding).

This insight is at the core of what makes Flow tick. As we wrote in our FAQ:

Flow doesn’t “break” or disprove the Trilemma, it dodges around it. The trick is noting that, if we let different nodes participate in different roles, we can choose the right trade-offs for each part of the system.

Flow maximizes security and decentralization for the Consensus Nodes, the part of the system most vulnerable to Byzantine attacks. This limits their scalability, of course, but that isn’t actually a problem because we don’t ask the Consensus Nodes to do anything computationally expensive.

On the other hand, we crank up the scalability for Execution Nodes to dramatically increase computation throughput. This compromises the security and decentralization of those nodes, which we address by ensuring that every step of every transaction is confirmed by the high security and decentralization Verification Nodes.

For each node type, the Trilemma holds as expected, but the overall effect is a system where the weaknesses of one part of the system are more than offset by the strengths of the other parts.

— withflow.org

The upshot: Because of the way Flow distributes the work of securing a blockchain between different node types, it can support massive scale without compromising decentralization or sharding the network.

Problems with sharding and app ecosystems

Sharding, app-chains, sidechains, and other “layer two” solutions effectively saddle the hardest part of scaling the blockchain onto application developers rather than solving it at the protocol level.

The fragmented state of these blockchains removes Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability (ACID) properties from transactions in the network. Loss of ACID guarantees makes building an app that needs to access data across fragments far more difficult and error-prone.

Sharding isn’t typically a problem for simple token transfers, but even simple interactions between smart contracts become very complicated in a sharded environment. This dramatically limits the composability and therefore network effects of smart contracts.

Getting Involved with Flow

As a team that has been building on cryptonetworks for the better part of a decade, first on bitcoin and most recently on Ethereum with CryptoKitties, Dapper wallet, and Cheeze Wizards — we have a long wish list of technical improvements we’re excited to enable for developers on Flow.

That said, as a team that has delivered products and platforms at scale to hundreds of millions of consumers, we also understand that none of the above matters if we don’t capture peoples’ imaginations by solving real problems and creating lasting delight.

That’s why the story of Flow and Dapper Labs goes beyond our technical infrastructure. We’re also proud to work with some of the best content publishers, storytellers, and cultural movers in the world.

We will publish more details about our partnership programs in a future post. For now, please:

• Review our technical primer on withflow.org
• Apply to work with us on Flow
• Join the Flow discord to follow the conversation
• Sign up for Dieter’s webinar with DCG on Oct-17
• If you’re at DevCon5 in Osaka, look out for Dete on the main stage:

Flow Network on Twitter

Attending @EFDevcon? Want to know how dapp developers think of sharding? On October 9th on the main stage, @dete73 dete73 will be giving his perspective on this topic from one of the most used dapps on Ethereum. You don't want to miss this!

Open Worlds on Flow was originally published in Dapper Labs on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.