Lock Your Sets 🔐
Featuring chaos at WAGMI United, 5% market spend return and 600k users on Sorare.
Reminder: Making Moves section⚡
There is a new section below that features easy moves you can make right now. This week it features Nike SWOOSH ID and MoonPay Passport. Scroll down for alpha!
This is it.
The final day of the year.
2022 wasn’t perfect. In fact, it was quite painful. There is no shortage of words to describe what happened to us in the NFT community this year, and quite frankly - I don’t want to spend much more time talking about it.
Tonight, the calendar will turn to a new year and hopefully a new vibe. We will make promises, vows, and resolutions, all geared towards a more balanced lifestyle and sober financial predictions.
We will gather in our life rafts disguised as Discords, and look for simple yet effective ways to weather this long storm. We will keeps our heads high, and leave the past behind.
Ok you know what fuck it - lets twist the knife one last time.
With fresh pain in our hearts, here is all the action from the final week of the year.
😈 Turmoil at WAGMI United
Remember WAGMI United?
They made headlines last year when they purchased a majority stake in Crawley Town, a 100+ year old English Soccee club, and dubbed it “The Internet’s Team”.
The concept was simple: Crawley Town would be run by a group of web3 natives, including Sports Cheetah Preston Johnson, with DAO-like input from holders of their genesis NFT.
Ownership activities kicked off earlier this year and seemed relatively chill. The leadership group gave off friendly vibes, and preached patience as they settled into a truly innovative concept in sports.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
This season, however, the team has lost 12 of 23 games and sits in 20th place (it finished 12th last season). And this past week, the new manager straight up left, caping a tumultuous stretch for the club.
And needless to say, Crawley Town diehards are not happy.
Their fan association has directly called out the WAGMI team, coincidentally turning this into an NFT-style founder hunt.
Necessary disclaimer here: I only just found out about this story last night, so will admit I may not have the complete story here. But the optics are not good! I am also a holder of the project (I think the concept is cool!)
More to come on this next week, as the story develops (and gets weirder? bus crash? what?)
And as for the actual NFTs?
This past week also marked the reveal of WAGMI’s Red Devil PFPs.
Although I try to support art in every form in the NFT space, I’m not sure many EFL fans will be won over by NFTs that look like this. Or actual NFT degens for that matter.
🔐 Top Shot Starts 2023 with a Lock
Last last week, Top Shot released tons of information regarding Net Neutral Supply and the much-anticipated mobile app in a Friday afternoon blog post.
It was part of a major dump of information that landed just as the holidays officially kicked off and presented immediate action for holders.
5% Back on MP Spend
Ending tonight at midnight PST (yes, December 31, 2022), all purchases on the marketplace will receive 5% back in Dapper Balance in real time.
Although this isn’t much at all ($1 back on a $20 Moment), I must admit I did take advantage of this “sale” by grabbing a few 4-star rookies. I got myself a whole $3.67 now to spend in Dapper bucks!
Locked Set Rewards
As teased way back in July, the rewards for Full Set holders will kick of this January, and will very much mirror the Team Leaderboard rewards (i.e. receiving NFTs in return for locking Moments).
The Details:
Snapshot is January 5th, 2023
Second Snapshot is May 30th, 2023 (yes, there are two waves of rewards)
Rewards are a variety of packs, and apply to ALL sets.
Now who gets what? Here’s the list, direct from the blog.
For each fully-locked NBA Legendary set, collectors will receive:
1 Top Shot 50 Pack at the end of the season
3 Rare NBA Metallic Gold LE packs from upcoming pack drops
Priority access to upcoming Legendary and Rare pack drops this series
For each fully-locked NBA Metallic Gold LE Set, collectors will receive:
3 NBA Metallic Gold LE packs
Priority access to at least 1 Rare Drop in Series 4
For each fully-locked Rare NBA (non-MGLE), Base Set, Cool Cats or MSFE set, collectors will receive:
1 Rare NBA Pack
2 Boosted Hot Packs
Priority access to at least 1 limited edition drop in Series 4
All other locked NBA sets and Vintage Vibes will receive:
2 Boosted Hot Packs
Personally, I’ve only locked ONE set; the Series 1 Finals Rare set.
Now, is it worth locking up thousands worth of moments for just 1x Rare Pack and a few Boosters? No.
But that’s not why I’m holding. I’ve got it vaulted away because its a special set to me, as it will likely be LeBron’s final appearance in the championship round.
The jury is still out on locking and I would advise anyone considering it to approach with caution. We have no idea what will happen next August when Moments begin to unlock, and many signs still points downwards for the Top Shot market (December 2022 saw fewer than 10k total buyers - the lowest since 2020).
So lock wisely friends.
🏆 Sorare Nets 585,000 Users for World Cup
Following its “Global Cup 2022” challenge, the fantasy platform is now flexing on the rest of the NFT space with monster user numbers.
585,000 active managers is quite a lot, although its worth noting that it has been difficult to find any on-chain data that fully supports these numbers.
Sorare has done a fantastic job creating a simple and free onboarding for sports fans, and I’m excited to see what they have in store for the rest of the NBA season.
You can read more about these numbers on blockster.
⚡MAKING MOVES⚡
This is a new section that recaps immediate action items in web3 x sports.
And I want to remind everyone that none of this is financial advice. Please make your own decisions! This is simply a list of stuff you might have missed!
On tap right now:
🔴 Sign up for MoonPay Passport | 10 seconds
MoonPay is a major fiat on-ramp and also brokered Bored Ape deals for celebs like Jimmy Fallon and Eminem. Not sure what their passport will entail just yet, but Keith Grossman (former CEO of TIME) recently joined the company.
🔴 Claim your Nike SWOOSH ID | 60 seconds
Nike’s Metaverse is coming fast, and you can now claim your future Digital ID. Also, it’s only available in the US (why!)
🟢 Christmas Day Challenges on Top Shot | 2 minutes
There are five challenges to choose from, ranging from $40-100 to complete. These challenges also count towards the Holiday of Hoops “Veteran” challenge.
🟢 OTM Rumble Week 17 | 2 minutes
Put your ALL DAY Moments to use. Two prize pools: $10k Free to play, and $20k Jolly Joker gated. No harm in putting in moments you already own.
🔵 Tax Harvest Your Illiquid NFTs | 10 minutes
The NFT Loss Harvestooor is a site that will buy your illiquid ethereum NFTs for pennies, allowing you to realize large losses. FINAL DAY TODAY!
🔵 Calculate your Top Shot Earnings | 30 minutes
LiveToken has a free CSV file download for all Top Shot users. It will show your gain/loss on each moment traded on the MP. Also good for last minute tax harvest!
📸 HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WEEK
Tons of amazing clips to choose from this year, but none were better than Luka and the Mavs pulling off an absolutely insane comeback (they were down 9 points with 35 seconds left), as Doncic recorded the first ever 60-point triple double.
🌐 AROUND THE METAVERSE
Notable highlights from the last seven days:
Sports
Top Shot is hitting the cardboard circuit this winter | PackripEwing
UFC Strike released its year-end recap | UFC Strike
Manchester United NFTs may have ripped off a web3 artist | ClownVamp
Web3
Trey Parker + Matt Stone (South Park) raise $20M for a Deep Fake Studio | Variety
China is launching its own government-controlled NFT marketplace | Coindesk
The Worst Moments of NFTs in 2022 | NFT Now
The Top NFT project on Solana is moving to ETH | TechCrunch
💀 TOP MEMES
**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
A web3 sports community. Podcasts. Newsletters. Events.
Tweets and Newsletters are not endorsements.