NBA's Top Shot 🏀

If you’re curious about what our subject today means, you are not alone. This first-of-a-kind NBA experience began to sell publicly through Dapper Labs only in October 2020, and it had already generated $2MM in beta prior to the public launch.

Credit: Dapper Labs

But what is NBA Top Shot? 
Even though mint condition sports cards still continue to skyrocket, the NBA has taken the novelty of owning limited edition sports cards to a new level through a joint venture with blockchain company Dapper Labs by selling limited edition numbered versions of NBA Top Shots. While NBA still owns the highlights, fans can collect, trade, and sell a LeBron dunk, and for $47,000 too! The company is reported to have generated nearly $20MM in sales with $1.5MM in trading volume in January already.

Top shots are sold in three ways: pack drops, challenges, and peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplace purchases. Pack drops are limited edition collector moments sold for a limited time only and once sold out, the only way to buy them is through the P2P marketplace. Meanwhile, challenges gamify how and when you collect specific moments, and once you have fulfilled all the criteria of a challenge, you can get limited edition moments. All transactions are traded through a blockchain developed by Dapper Labs called Flow and records top shots as a single owner “token” that cannot be copied, unlike other cryptocurrencies. 

Forbes recently reported that a LeBron James moment sold for $71,455. 

Dapper Labs
Dapper Labs has already seen multiple funding rounds raised with many big-name VCs and individual investors. The company was founded in 2018 by Dieter Shirley, Mack Flavelle, and Roham Gharegozlou and is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. Aside from NBA Top Shots, the company is also responsible for the popular blockchain application CryptoKitties.