The NBA Metaverse Goes Bust💥
Plus, summer plans from Top Shot and Sorare, and a big-time merger in the space. We're also dropping something to our holders
Editor’s Note: This will be the last newsletter for a few weeks, as The First Mint enters its annual Summer break. The podcast will continue with special guest co-host ChamberRekt, and we’ll be resuming newsletters on July 22nd.
Happy Canada Day, folks!
Yes, today is our day, where we spend the day immersed in Canadian traditions, such as fur trapping, maple syrup chugging, Celine Dion impressions, and the annual Poutine Eating Classic. classic:
I’ll leave it to you to decided wether any of that is true or not.
In other, totally unrelated news:
Niantic, the company that created Pokemon Go, has announced a massive round of layoffs as well as the closure of several licensed properties, including NBA All World.
Which is kind of twisted when you realize that All Word just launched last January after they raised $300M to build it just 20 months ago.
Is that the lifecycle of licensed digital products now?
5.5 months, and then they decide that AR sucks and they pack it up? The stated reason for closing down AW was “difficult conditions in the AR market” (i.e. Apple is gonna eat everyone’s lunch).
Let’s hope its not a preview of things to come.
Now, let’s get onto the somewhat more inspiring stories of the week!
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🏟️ Candy Digital Merges with Palm Studio
It’s no secret that times are tough in NFT land (and even worse in the sports sector).
And so we should not be surprised to see some major survival tactics employed by the companies that just two years ago were able to raise astronomical funding.
This week, Candy Digital announced a new round of layoffs as well as a merger with their NFT partner, Palm Studio.
You may remember the Palm blockchain from hits like Game of Thrones NFTs. Should be fun!
📦 Top Shot Announces More Series 4 Supply
This week, despite the NBA Finals having ended many weeks ago, Top Shot announced plans to continue dropping S4 supply throughout the summer.
The news came via the latest edition of their “Mailbag”, which aims to answer questions for the community.
Supply coming this Summer:
More Base Sets moments for S4
New moments from three rare sets: Throwdowns, For The Win, Video Game Numbers. These will round out each set.
Historical moments from Series 4 (no idea what they could be)
Two WNBA Packs for this current season (Base and MGLE)
For the non-WNBA moments, it was stated that the supply would come largely from Locked Set Rewards and in-app drops.
🏅 Sorare NBA Announces Season-Long Rankings
Sorare also put out a Summer-mailbag style blog post this week, detailing their plans for next season of NBA play.
Most notable, they dropped major updates to the gameplay, including:
Daily Competitions
A club shop for exclusive IRL items
Season-long cumulative rankings (similar to “ATP rankings in tennis”)
I love this last feature as it will aggregate people’s scores through the season.
📦 Calling All DAY ONE Holders
Hey you - did you buy our NFT two years ago when it came out, or anytime since?
If the answer is yes, well we’ve got something coming just for you.
I can’t reveal any more details yet, other than to say that this Fall we’ll be getting back to our roots and dropping something to our DAY ONE community.
The link to claim is here, and reminder this is only for people who hold our NFT.
I still don’t know for sure if this first one is real or not, but it must be.
**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. Collectibles, NFTs, and Metaverse.
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