Embracing The Burn 📛
Featuring New Look Locker Room Packs, A Rising Market, Burn Badges, Crafting Challenges & More
GM, B&B Ballers! Happy Wednesday — hope you’ve had an awesome week!
While I’ve been grinding out watching a lot of Summer League action (a VERY mixed bag of game quality) — something that I’ve been snacking on this week is highlights of the likely top prize of next year’s NBA draft class, Victor Wembanyama:
He is like every NBA 2K gamers’ MyPlayer dream — listed at 7’2 (though he looks even taller than that, which is absurd), 18 years old, a guard skillset with range from 3PT… Scary times ahead.
Along with Chet Holmgren, the new NBA meta might be coming in the form of humongous do-it-all players that are basically unguardable. If you’re a middle to bad NBA team, it might be the year to fire up the tank!
Let’s get into all the action from the last few days:
New-Look Locker Room Packs 📦
The upcoming Locker Room pack drop is getting a bit of a makeover, with 20% of Thursday’s Legendary/Rare supply (drop detailed here) being mixed in — with the price staying constant at 4 trade tickets:
Full details in the Top Shot Blog.
The sentiment from this move seemed pretty overwhelmingly positive on the Twitter streets, and things in general seem to be trending up in Top Shot — even… (gasp) ACCOUNT VALUES?!?
Via Collective (formerly MomentRanks):
It’s a bit paradoxical that the Top Shot vibes always seem to struggle during the biggest NBA time of the year (playoffs) and improve during the offseason, but we saw a similar story last summer.
With the burning ramping up across the ecosystem, could we be hitting a bit of a groove here heading into Series 4?
Burn Badge 📛
Speaking of burning… We’ve got a new burn badge!
Unique to crafting challenge rewards, the ‘crafting challenge indicator’ was implemented on Tuesday:
If you are curious how the burning challenges have gone so far, @NBATopShotTalk did a great review breaking them all down here.
Additionally, check out Veerman’s dashboard for all the stats on total moments in circulation, burned, in the Locker Room, etc. Lots of interesting data on where things stand from a broader ecosystem perspective!
The next round of ‘Squad Goals’ also rolled out on Tuesday, with the Dallas Mavericks (Jalen Brunson) and the Washington Wizards (Bradley Beal) up for crafting. The current low cost to complete is hovering around $160 for each of the challenges, in line with what we’ve roughly seen for the other teams.
It’s also been fascinating to watch Top Shot/Dapper’s transition from being seemingly anti-burn to fully embracing it (the corny tweets are coming in HOT right now) . A year ago, I would’ve never thought they’d lean into it this hard — so kudos to the team for being willing to experiment and change direction.
Embrace the burn!
TFM + Flowty 🤝
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.
Around The First Mint 🗣
🎧 Can Brands Win in NFTs? (Feat. Adam Brotman)
These brands, they are a changin’. With many fortune 100 brands now entered into the web3 arena, what will this seismic shift mean for the average retail consumer, who will now need to navigate the metaverse to find their fave product? We welcome Adam Brotman, former EVP + CDO of Starbucks, and now advisor to many web3 projects, to talk the brands of web3.
🎧 The Future of UFC Strike (Feat. Malik Jiffry)
🎧 The Future of Intellectual Property (Feat. Tally Labs)
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.