A Dapper Decision 📜
Featuring Employee Policies, Community Feedback, Excessive Celebrations & More
Good Morning, B&B Squad! I’m back, baby!
Hope you all had an excellent weekend, and a great start to the week! I am recovering from our wedding festivities, which were an absolute blast (but also exhausting).
As a big-time introvert, I am much more comfortable behind the computer screen than being the center of attention in a big gathering — so I’ll be recharging my social batteries for a while after this one!
Also, wading back into the NFT world after unplugging for a week has me feeling like:
Let’s get into all the action from the last few days:
A Dapper Decision 📜
The Top Shot Community account released a form on Monday, requesting feedback on a new proposal aimed to allow Dapper employees to be able to re-engage and collect on the Top Shot, All Day and UFC Strike platforms:
This has been an extremely polarizing issue, dating back to the days of Roham’s whale-sized Top Shot account. And given the communities’ longstanding trust issues, it’s a sticky situation to navigate.
However, the proposal details some major restrictions that should alleviate most concerns from the Twitter mob (if they read it). A few key notes:
Dapper Employees can only participate in COMMON, FANDOM or CONTENDER tier drops
Employees can enter standard-type blended pack drops, but cannot keep any Legendary, Ultimate, or Champion tier, #1/Jersey Serial/Last Mints. Those that are pulled will be sent to the Locker Room/removed from the account.
Employees can not, among other things:
participate in Flash Challenges
Sell Moments
Stack Moments
Act on any non-public/advantageous info
I’d recommend reading the full proposal (in the tweet above), which details all of the other limitations. My two cents:
With the restrictions proposed, I see very little risk to allowing employees to participate in the platforms — and I think there are a ton of positives. Jayne phrased it well — give the employees the perspective of empathy instead of sympathy:
Additionally, employees are basically forced holders — and more diamond-handed collectors is what everyone wants, right? RIGHT?
I do hope there is a ton of transparency around the employee accounts — let the blockchain sleuths see exactly what transactions are taking place to have some public accountability.
But other than that? I welcome the Dapperites to the platforms they are helping build — and know many of them are some of the ‘truest’ collectors out there.
All of this being said — between this and the recent vote on the future of S1 reserve moments — there is a fine line to thread with getting community feedback and giving people too much of a voice. As we see in many DAOs across the NFT space, too many opinions = zero decision-making.
And while the proposal states that employees aren’t eligible for leaderboards, I… can’t. help. myself.
Roham sailing up the leaderboards like:
Excessive Celebrations ❌
NBA Top Shot GM Jayne Peressini (who hasn’t had a tweet-folly in a while), got a flag from the Twitter community for excessive celebration in a since-deleted tweet on Sunday:
Top Shot has a lot to be proud of under Jayne’s leadership, and a rising market and new features have the platform gaining some very nice momentum of late — but let other people give you the flowers!
I’ll also reference my flywheel from a few newsletters ago — we’ve seen this story before. Fingers crossed for sustained growth and success for longer stretches of time than a month or two — but now is no time for a victory lap!
Flowty x TFM 🤝
The First Mint is excited to announce our new partnership with Flowty, a peer-to-peer NFT loan and rental platform on the Flow Blockchain founded by Michael Levy (fondly known as MBL throughout the Top Shot community):
Are you an NBA Top Shot collector / investor? Did you know that you can do a LOT more with moments than just buy and sell them?
Need help completing a Top Shot challenge? Rent on Flowty.
Have extra moments for a challenge and want to generate income in a safe way? Rent out your moments on Flowty.
Need liquidity but don’t want to sell your moments? Use moments as collateral to take out a loan on Flowty.
Looking for an alternative way to invest in Top Shot? Generate passive income by lending (funding loans) on Flowty.
Flowty’s rental and loan marketplace allows renters, owners, borrowers and lenders to transact in a safe and easy way!
Want to learn more? Join the Flowty Discord and follow along on Twitter at @flowty_io.
Hro x TFM — The Lantern Drop 🧑🎤
This is a paid post with our friends at Hro, as part of our year-long partnership with them to get the word about the DC Multiverse.
The next Hro drop is coming on Thursday, July 28 — featuring officially licensed hybrid NFTs from The Lantern Corps!
Full drop details:
Public Sale — Thursday, July 28 @ 12 PM PST / 7 PM UTC
15,900 total packs, $50 each
3 NFTs per pack, with a chance of ultra rare Hro card inserts
Visit Hro.gg to learn more and join the Hro community!
Around The First Mint 🗣
🎧 What Makes an NFT Bull Run? (Feat. Mack Flavelle)
What drives NFT bull markets? And what will bring on the next one? We've got the co-founder of Dapper Labs, Mack Flavelle, on the show to tell us about how NFTs came about, and how their predecessors were emojis and GIFs. Oh, and he also thinks that Roadmaps are super dumb.
🎧 Crypto Portfolio 101 (Feat. Scott Melker)
🎧 Can Brands Win in NFTs? (Feat. Adam Brotman)
🎧 The Future of UFC Strike (Feat. Malik Jiffry)
Thanks for reading! — Zach @ The First Mint
Follow Zach on Twitter at @GhostOfGregOden.
**This is not financial advice. Nothing in this newsletter, podcast, or publication should be considered financial or trading advice of any kind. Please do your own thorough research and make your own trading decisions. This is not advice.”
About The First Mint
The First Mint is a web3 media company. We make. We write. We talk. We listen.