Leaderboard Alpha Leaks 🔎

Featuring an Ode to Bill Russell, Leaderboard Leaks & Metrics, the NBA's Web3 Experience & More

Aug 3

Good Morning, B&B Fam! Happy Hump Day, and hope your week is off to an excellent start!

On a somber note — the NBA lost a true legend this weekend, with Bill Russell passing away on Sunday at the age of 88. Both on the court (11x NBA Champion, 5x MVP, 12x All-Star, amongst a million other accolades) and off it (activist, civil rights + equality advocate, barrier breaker), Russell impacted professional sports like few others have.

If you want to learn more (his story is one worth listening to), a great primer via the NBA’s In Memoriam vid:

NBA @NBA

In Memoriam: Bill Russell (1934-2022)

And a good article on Russell’s off-the-court achievements from Sports Illustrated here. RIP to an all-time great!

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

Reward Alpha 🕵️

We got a little bit of alpha on Tuesday, via our favorite source — Jayne!

On Top Shot’s Twitter Spaces, “The Weekly Burn”, there was a discussion about Team Leaderboard Rewards — which is a hot topic given the polarizing reward structure changes from last week.

After Top Shot’s Packrip Ewing confirmed with “99 percent certainty” that Top 750 Team leaderboard rewards will be ‘Team Top Shot Debuts’ and in the Rare tier (though I believe Jacob had previously said they would be Fandom?), Jayne added later a mention of ‘planning for’ Legendary.

While there seemed to be a misunderstanding of what the initial question was on Jayne’s part (so nothing confirmed yet), hearing that Legendary rewards are in the leaderboards plans is a pretty juicy leak.

Jayne @Jayne

@davyc3 This is why I can’t join these things

Given the mint sizes of legendaries being <100, I’d think that these would be for those somewhere within the Top 100 (not the October 750 reward as mentioned in the Spaces) — and likely to come later in the year. While getting to the Top 100 is certainly no easy feat, racing up the leaderboards just got a bit more interesting!

Speaking of getting into the Top 100… Some good data here on some leaderboard metrics from Momentum Labs:

Momentum Labs @momentum_labs_

Looking for @nbatopshot Leaderboard data? We’ve got rankings right now along with some efficiency metrics around S3 checklists! @TheMomentNerd is working on a script to show where you rank when you log into the site @jonboybeats is putting together bottleneck metrics 🔢📈🤓

NBA & The Metaverse 🌎

Since you’re reading this newsletter, you are probably no stranger to Top Shot — one of the NBA’s most extensive foray’s into Web3/NFTs/the Metaverse. As constantly one of the more forward-thinking professional leagues, the NBA has not been shy with experimenting (remember The Association NFTs?)

The rise of our little corner of the internet, with both the league and the professional athletes themselves, was detailed in this article from Fast Company:

Fast Company @FastCompany

More than any other sports league, the NBA has gone all in on Web3

More than any other sports league, the NBA has gone all in on Web3With a financially savvy athlete pool, tech mogul owners, and an active sneaker culture, basketball was primed for an implosion of NFT projects.f-st.co

And this quote really blew my mind, via Spencer Dinwiddie:

“Maybe it was girls, cars, and stuff eight years ago,” he says on a Zoom call. But about five years ago, as players became more financially savvy, that started to change; suddenly people were giving tips on their stock portfolios and chatting about VC funds.
This past season, things evolved even further. “Now it’s Bored Apes, NFTs, and digital assets,” Dinwiddie says.

Dinwiddie is no stranger to innovation, and is a big crypto advocate (who also tried to tokenize his NBA contract). But to see a professional athlete with plans for his own show about the space is truly amazing:

Legion Hoops @LegionHoops

Spencer Dinwiddie plans to produce “a new show about the future of finance, Web3, DeFi, Bitcoin, social marketplaces, etc.”

Flowty x TFM 🤝

The First Mint is excited to partner 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 🗣

🎧 Value In The Bear Market (Feat. Tasha Labs)

The crypto market can't make up its mind, so we called up one of the best in the biz: Tascha from Tascha Labs, who literally holds a PhD in Macroeconomics and is a well known writer in the crypto space. She shares her insight on the macro, the war, the market, and how this current version of NFTs has zero chance of sticking around.

🎧 What Makes an NFT Bull Run? (Feat. Mack Flavelle)

🎧 Crypto Portfolio 101 (Feat. Scott Melker)

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.

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