🎙️The Future Of UFC Strike | Pod 167
What’s up everybody, it’s LG Doucet here. And welcome again to The First Mint substack!
Last week, we migrated over from Revue, and appreciate all of you bearing through the change with us.
For regular listeners, you may have also noticed a change in theme of the podcast these last few months; around the start of 2022, we started aggressively zooming out from Top Shot to talk bigger questions in NFTs.
We’ve since discussed Crypto Influencers, Access Passes, The Survival of Sports NFTs, and talked about the future a lot. And that was before the bear market!
This summer, and especially over the coming few weeks, we’ll continue on this path and talk not just to leaders in the space, but to people who have expertise in NFT-adjacent areas, like crypto trading and big brand marketing.
Although I can’t guarantee we’ll necessarily stick to this direction, it felt right to explore other avenues as the core of the NFT business shifts from new, niche, and raw, to stable, well-built, and likely part of our every day lives over the new few years.
As usual, thank you for being with us, and thank you for listening/reading🙏🏻
🎙️Today’s Pod: The Future of UFC Strike | Malik Jiffry
Meet Malik Jiffry, the General Manager of UFC Strike.
In the last month alone, he and team have shipped features like Burning, Free Moments, Themed-Drops, Champions Club, and even setup an incredible booth at International Fight Week.
Although these have parallels to other sports projects, I’ve found the speed and execution on Strike to be a level above the rest. And with no off-season ever in the MMA world, we’re guaranteed more to come soon.
So naturally, I had a lot of burning questions for Malik:
Was he the one that decided they would burn 20 moments per challenge?
Was it his call to dish out FREE NFTs for new and existing users?
And…Strike has a General Manager? Just like Top Shot? What?
Does he personally know Izzy Adesanya?
Is UFC Strike gmi?
And during our recording, he did not disappoint. Joining the pod direct from Vegas, where he had just arrived to setup for a massive marketing play, the GM revealed some spicy nuggets for the future of the platform, including:
Malik considers burning to be their best achievement so far, and I agree given the cheer load of moments burned so far (over 25k).
They want to reward people for believing in athletes, which is why they kicked off their burning with a Khamzat Chimaev-focused challenge.
They want to create systems that reward this belief, so we can expect to see potentially MORE fighter-focused challenges and reward in the near future.
Scarcity is taken very seriously, which is likely why we’ve seen ultra aggressive burning challenges focus on the Genesis Set of Series 0.
Check it out:
And for reference, here was the booth setup in Vegas this weekend
📺 ICYMI: The Future of Intellectual Property
Last week, the boys from Tally Labs, creators of Jenkins The Valet, came on the show to talk Intellectual Property and NFT Film Franchises.
And 10 minutes in, their Twitter get hacked!
Beyond the hack, I actually quite a lot in this one. For example, I didn’t actually know the different types of Creative Rights that your NFTs afford you (turns out there are THREE).
I really do think some of the bigger bear market winners will be groups that have ambitions far beyond simply creating a cool NFT project; surviving this downturn needs vision and massive swings. Tally has both of those, and they are a group to watch these coming 12-24 months.
Don’t believe me? Here’s what the community had to say:
✨Happening at The First Mint
Each week we publish a podcast about NFTs and the bigger questions of web3. Check out some of our recent faves!
🎙️The Future of Intellectual Property | Tally Labs
🎙️Top Shot’s New Boss | Jayne Peressini
🎙️The Next 100M People in NFTs
**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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