A Playbook For Success 📋
A Playbook For Success 📋
Featuring A Major Entrance into the NBA NFT Space, All Day Innovations, A Midseason Tournament & More
Good Morning, B&B Brigade! Hope you had an excellent week!
We got an interesting Shams tweet on Friday, with news that the long-rumored mid-season NBA tournament could start as soon as 2023-24:
As someone who loved the play-in tournament, I think this format could be super entertaining. And with a single-game elimination, it would be wild to see some of the similar drama that takes place during March Madness come from the best players on the planet.
We’ve seen the Elam Ending bring more competitiveness back to the All-Star Game (or at least portions of it), and I could see players kicking into another gear for a potential cash prize or playoff reward. People always critique that the majority of the NBA regular season is irrelevant — and maybe a midseason tourney would inject some fun into the grind!
Let’s get into all the action from the last few days:
Sorare Has Next 🗣
The NBA NFT space just got a bit bigger this week, with fantasy-blockchain company Sorare making an entrance into the basketball realm.
A comprehensive thread on Sorare, which already has a thriving soccer game as well as an MLB platform:
In case you don’t click on that, here are some of Sorare’s major accolades so far:
Major funding ($680M in Series B funding last year, giving them a $4.3B valuation) including several notable pro athlete investors (Kylian Mbappe, Serena Williams, Blake Griffin, Rudy Gobert, Gerard Piqué)
A bustling marketplace and large audience already on the platform:
Some jaw-dropping sales for the top-tier cards on OpenSea (game is on the Ethereum blockchain, a liquidity haven for NFTs)
While the knee-jerk reaction is to immediately bring Top Shot into the conversation, it’s not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison. Sorare is a fantasy game — and while Top Shot has definitely tried to add gamification through Flash Challenges (the Hardcourt dream is probably dead, we hardly knew thee), the focus has always been on the collectible aspect.
There is room for both, just like DraftKings’ new Reignmakers product doesn’t necessarily step on NFL All Day’s toes. Speaking of which, this seems like a perfect time for a shameless plug — check out our guide to the world of fantasy football NFTs, dropped earlier this week:
A Playbook For Success 📋
Speaking of NFL All Day…
The football platform from Dapper Labs has been making moves as the 2022-23 season kicks off, with a major new feature sending the community into a frenzy: Playbook.
The gamified system rewards users for activity on the platform, a souped-up version of the Flash Challenges / former Baller Status seen on Top Shot:
Wait, this is a basketball newsletter, you say? Well, I bring up Playbook because, as NBA Top Shot GM eloquently puts — Dapper Sports is all the #sameteam:
Playbook works well for All Day for similar reasons to why fantasy football is so much more popular than basketball — the NFL owns a day of the week. Football games are appointment television each week, making it much easier to follow and play along with as opposed to the daily grind of the NBA season.
However, while on the surface it often seems that All Day adjusts and learns from Top Shot, maybe the relationship can go both ways? All Day’s successes provide a “playbook” of their own — a blueprint for Top Shot to take and adjust for their own platform.
And while Top Shot has relied on leaderboard and locking hype throughout the summer, hopefully S4 brings some new developments to match the excitement currently being felt around All Day.
Some hopium (though overpromising is always a RISKY proposition in the Top Shot waters):
Around The First Mint 🗣
🎧 Why NFTs Will Be So Much Bigger Than We Think (Feat. Andrew Steinwold)
We know NFTs have potential, but just how big will they get? We welcome a true OG and podcaster, Andrew Steinwold, host of Zima Red, to break down how NFTs will come to swallow land deeds, international markets, and all forms of commerce. Plus, we get a sneak peek into the early days of the NFT scene.
🎧 The Man Who Called the LUNA Collapse (Feat. Jack Niewold)
🎧 The King of NFT Twitter (Feat. ThreadGuy)
🎧 The ETH Merge Explained (Feat. 0xQuit)
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
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