Crafting (Finally) Commences 🎉

Jun 12, 2022

Featuring the First Crafting Challenge, the Squad Goals Set, Challenge Corner, Surviving the Bear Market & More

GM, NFT Squad! Cheers to the weekend!

It’s been a pretty rough week in the traditional markets, and Friday brought even more pain — with reports of inflation rates in the US rising to 40-year highs. And those negative macro trends led to even more pain in the more risky assets like crypto(and NFTs, by extension).

However, while the numbers aren’t great right now, I don’t feel that the fundamentals around our digital future have changed — macro issues are just a bump in the road, but we’ll keep driving!

A good thread on surviving the bear market, from the always thoughtful Zeneca:

zeneca.eth (🔮,🔥) @ MET Amsterdam @Zeneca_33

Fortunes are sowed in bear markets, and harvested in bull markets. If you're still here, reading this tweet, while OS volume is at yearly lows and most of crypto has tanked 50-100%, well, you're in a pretty damn good place at a pretty damn good time. The most important thing 🧵

Let’s get into all the action from the last few days:

Crafting (Actually) Arrives 🔥

After a one-day pump fake, the first NBA Top Shot crafting challenge went live on Friday — with a Ja Morant rare Throwdowns reward up for grabs:

TheFirstMint @TheFirstMint

🏀TOP SHOT | MORANT CRAFTING CHALLENGE🏀 Reward: Morant Throwdowns S3 Floor: 🐻$40 - 3x S2 Throwdown 🐻$58 - 3x S3 Throwdown 🐻$309 - S2 Morant Rising ⭐ or S2 Throwdowns 🐻$260 - S3 Morant ASG or MG LE S3 🐻$6 - 2x Morant Total Floor: $875 ⏰Deadline: June 14th at 1pm ET

Here’s a video of our friend Veerman completing the burn, If you want to get a feel for what the new feature looks like in action (that Disco Inferno background music has me vibing!).

The current cost to complete sits at $834, with 185 completions (and 1850 moments burnt) as of this writing.

If you thought crafting would be a magic pill to fix the ecosystem, you might need to lower your expectations. But it IS a step in the right direction, and one that could have some great long term potential for the TS ecosystem.

A good thread on the upside of burning:

LG DOUCET @LgDoucet

Earlier this week, I wrote over 3300+ words about why we need BURNING in sports NFTs. Today, @nbatopshot will launch this much awaited feature. But will it be enough? Thoughts below incl: - Need for an active economy - The different ways to burn - Short + Long Term Impact 1/

We should see some interesting new crafting challenge formats coming soon, like the ‘team-specific’ one teased in the blog:

This summer, we will be giving collectors a variety of opportunities to put this new feature to work, allowing collectors to burn to earn in different ways that fit different collecting styles.

For starters, you can expect to see one Crafting Challenge for every NBA team rolled out in the coming weeks, with rewards living in Series 4’s Squad Goals Rare set.

Each of these team-specific Crafting Challenges will require multiple Moments from a specific team’s NBA Top Shot collection in exchange for a special, hand-picked Moment for each team that’s been saved for this occasion.

Challenge Corner 🏆

Crafting aside, we also got a new Conference Finals challenge featuring one of my favorite highlights of the playoffs as the reward — Andrew Wiggins’ demolition of Luka and the Dallas Mavericks:

Shout out to Wiggins, who has been absolutely amazing this postseason, and has been one of the Warriors’ most important pieces in the Finals so far.

Full list of active challenges:

ATTW4 Challenge

Reward: Andrew Wiggins ATTW4 Moment
Deadline: Tuesday, June 14 @ 10 AM

WNBA Flash Challenge: Seize the Spotlight

Reward: Diana Taurasi S4 Moment
Deadline: Tuesday, June 14 @ 10 AM

NBA Flash Challenge: One Step Closer

Reward: S2 or S3 Base Pack (Rookie), Variable Prizes Based on Completion (Hero Ball)
Deadline: Tuesday, June 14 @ 10 AM

Throwdowns Crafting Challenge

Reward: Ja Morant
Deadline: Tuesday, June 14 @ 10 AM

Around The First Mint 🗣

🎥 TFM Live: 10KTF Tutorial & HRO Giveaway

On this episode of The First Mint Live, we talk about the week that was in the NFT world. We’ll also be joined by Quad to learn about the 10KTF project.