A Tough Week at Dapper Labs 🥵
A Tough Week at Dapper Labs 🥵
Featuring lawsuit fallout, PGA on Draft Kings, Sorare gaffes, and Tom Brady thirst traps.
Some days, web3 inspires us and offers glimpses of a beautiful future.
Other days, it takes a few steps backwards, and we are left to wonder if any of the stuff we follow at TFM can truly survive to the next decade.
This week was the latter, as the lawsuit against Dapper Labs continued its course: a topic we broke down in full on Wednesday night.
Easily the biggest story of the week (it was even featured in Bloomberg), as the case’s outcome could set precedents across the board for all NFT collectible projects.
Now that its been a few days and we’ve had time to digest it, one of the items that stands out to me the most is the use of emojis. If this case goes through it may set precedent for certain emojis to represent financial return (crazy!)
And if you’re keen to see how its being handled internally at Dapper, feast your eyes on the email that went out to the company’s investors on Wednesday night.
TL;DR - they made $135M in 2022, have tons of cash, and are going full steam ahead.
And to make matters worse, the company laid off another 20% of staff the same day, following a round of layoffs last Fall.
In this go around, community favorite and NFL ALL DAY rep AJ Curry was part of the cuts. We’ll miss you AJ!
The question now is: what’s next for Dapper?
Will they focus entirely on building out the Flow Blockchain, and attracting more big IPs like Doodles? (In Roham’s investor note, he did point to 2 new IPs coming).
Or will they revamp their sports products, which have sat between 6,000-10,000 weekly users for months now?
Time will tell.
And time will eventually make us bullish again on our dear corner of crypto.
So with that said, let’s get into all the action from this past week.
Every week, we feature actionable moves you can make right now in the space. Of course, these are not financial advice :)
🟢 Mint a FREE Coinbase NFT | 30 seconds
Coinbase announced they are building an L2 on Optimism, and have an Open Edition mint going to commemorate the occasion.
🟢 Join Own The Madness Waitlist | 30 seconds
Our old pals at Own The Moment have done it again again! They are releasing a March Madness style game next month. Waitlist is open now!
🔵 Calculate your NFT Earnings on NFT Bank | 30 minutes
Tax season is coming so get your full CSV transaction download on NFT Bank (its free!). I used this last year to do my taxes (it was still challenging). We are not affiliated.
⛳ The PGA is coming to Draft Kings
DK Reignmakers announced they have signed the PGA, and will be releasing fantasy NFT cards as soon as this coming week.
We don’t yet have details for price or supply, but will keep you all posted on Twitter as we get more info.
Reignmakers is an interesting platform to me. They launched with the NFLPA (not the NFL) for this past season, a release that was quickly criticized for oversupply and value-lacking packs. They also host UFC.
The problem for me is the availability of data. I absolutely cannot find any data on the volume or total buyers for this marketplace - and I’m dying to know!
Golf is an interesting addition. We don’t really yet any Golf NFTs, but there’s a rabid fanbase there and fantasy is a good start.
👑 LeBron’s Record Moment Debuts at $8k
It feels like ancient history now: LeBron becoming the all-time leading scorer in the NBA. But it was literally earlier this month.
To commemorate, Top Shot went absolutely bonkers, offering over 100,000 hot packs and a legendary reward to the top 30 holders of LeBron. They also gave Legendary moments to random hot pack buyers, which all finally hit wallets this week.
At the time of this writing, LeBron’s historical Moment had been traded 3x times.
Now I’ll say - this is where I think Top Shot fits super well into the culture of the NBA. Big moments SHOULD be commemorated with NFTs, and available for fans to own and trade as they please. That’s the part where we get to evaluate the cultural significance of the NBA!
That being said, I really do wish this Moment was even rarer than it is. Despite being only minted to /99, it has now pushed the total supply of Legendary LeBrons to 664!
Read that last statistic again. Over 10,000 Rares of LeBron! That’s more than there are Bored Apes, and he’s literally the all-time leader scorer of the league!
Not sure how to fix this. In my ideal world, TS wouldn’t mind another moment for at least a year, and spend the time reducing/burning supply.
🐐 Tom Brady Comes Back To Autograph
As you may recall, last November I dove deep into Autograph, which is an NFT platform co-founded by Tom Brady and his 24-year-old neighbor (yes, actually).
After speaking with several community members and collectors, I documented the drama in a podcast episode, and also featured this story on Twitter:
When I investigated Brady’s involvement, the TLDR was this: that Autograph was his retirement project, and his participation was postponed when he un-retired last year.
Flash forward to 2023, Brady has retired yet again, and seems committed to reviving the project and hosting collector meetups!
This is good news.
We don’t need more projects failing in NFTs - we need promises kept! So I’m happy to see Tom getting back on the horse and will continue tracking.
That being said. Damn, there is some weird thirsty shit on this guy’s timeline.
⚾ Sorare MLB Goes Silent on Changes
Very little is known at this point about Sorare’s plans for MLB.
A recap from last summer:
MLB launched on July 22 on Sorare
They released about 50-100 Limited Cards per player
Rewards for tournaments were more cards, not ETH rewards like in Soccer
All cards released are considered Series 1, and have now lost their 5% bonus from the first season.
This last point is contentious - it just happened out of the blue this past Thursday with no explanation. Not a great move!
Although this change is customary for Sorare collections, the fact that the platform failed to announce it - or even provide any hint of what is to come in Series 2 - is really not a good look.
With under 300 weekly buyers on the platform, lets hope they can turn this around before the season begins!
📊 The Weekly Charts
We now have the full charts for active users and total volume on Sorare, Dapper, and all platforms save Draft Kings (more on that below).
These will be posted regularly to Twitter.
To kick off, let’s look at College Hoops.
Brandon Miller had an incredible game the other night, coming in a week where he was the focus of immense controversy: he has been accused of supplying a gun to a teammate who then used that gun to kill someone.
He responded with a 41-point night and game winner.
Across the ocean, we’ve all been privy to the Victor Wenbanyama hype. But have you ever seen a 7’5 teenager get dunked on??
This one is from the week prior to the All-Star break. Kyrie puts the moves on the Clippers. But hey don’t get your hopes up Mavs fans - I’m sure Kyrie will throw a tantrum any day now.
And last, here’s DK Metcalf jumping like 20 feet in the air.
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**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.”
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