New Dapps Report: The Association – Following in the Footsteps of NBA Top Shot

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This week we look at The Association, a collection of 30,000 NFTs based on the NBA 2022 playoffs

In the April 2022 edition of DappRadar’s New Dapps Report, we look at popular and interesting NFT collections, and this time we cover The Association. The New Dapps Report serves as an executive overview and analysis of financial metrics for NFT collections. 

This New Dapps Report is part of a series of executive reports that provide readers with a high-level perspective of promising, generative NFT collections. The report focuses on financial metrics, including sales activity and price analysis, and distribution metrics like Unique Holders Ratio and Whale Concentration Index. It additionally dives into whales’ behavioral patterns and social and technical overviews. 

This week we look at The Association, a collection of 30,000 NFTs based on the NBA 2022 playoffs. Each NFT corresponds to a specific player. However, the unique feature of this collection is that the NFTs evolve depending on each player’s performance. As the player completes more achievements during the playoffs season, the corresponding NFTs will acquire more visual features. 

Please do not consider this document as financial advice. 

Data updated on: Apr 28, 2022

Table of Contents

Key Takeaways

  • The Association is the 14th most traded collection in the last seven days with a volume of $ 13,145,165
  • In a week’s worth of trading, the Association already has 16,646 unique traders

Financial overview

Blockchain: Ethereum

Launch date: Apr 22, 2022

Edition size: 30,000 – Limited Edition

Traits: NA

Attributes: NA

Floor price: 0.19 ETH

A week after launch,  the Association has generated a trading volume of over $13 million and is the 14th most traded collection. The collection was free to mint (while gas fees still apply), so the starting price is the average price on the first day of trading, 0.11 ETH. 

The current floor price of 0.19 ETH has appreciated by 73%, while the average price of 0.23 ETH has appreciated by 109%. While these stats are on the low end, it is essential to remember that the collection is still only a week old, and the art has been released on April 27th. This collection also follows the same pattern as NBA Top Shot by releasing a larger than average collection of NFTs, but these will develop according to the players’ performance.  

Added Utility

The Association has not revealed a utility roadmap at the time of writing. The only utility is the art and the visual progression during the season. Basketball collectors and general sports fans will particularly appreciate this collection. Those interested in speculating on the performance of specific players can purchase the NFT of a particular team or player. If the player or team has a good season, the NFT will become more intricate and that might logically increase its value.

Social Awareness and Engagement 

The Association has a moderate online social presence. The Discord server has 60,256 active users, which indicates a well-populated server. The Discord is open to the public and has an intricate onboarding procedure to filter bots and bad actors. The server is very active, and devs participate in the discussions.

The Association Twitter went live in March 2022 and currently has 26,804 followers. The account experienced 97% of its total growth in the last 30 days, gaining an average of 864 new followers per day. This indicates poor growth performance because these figures are significantly below average. For reference, at a similar point in time, successful collections like Azuki, Doodles, or CloneX have had Twitter accounts with more than 60,000 followers and daily growth above 2,500 followers per day. 

The Association has 16,646 unique traders, which is a profoundly high amount, larger than many other successful collections like Azuki (14,130), CloneX (9,440), or Doodles (12,234). Compared to NBA Top Shot at a similar point in time after launch, the Association is outperforming in total sales volume ($11,521), average sale price ($31.52), and unique traders (72). 

Team Overview 

The Association team is not public. According to the information provided on the Discord, the NBA is officially responsible for developing the collection. 

Technical Overview

The Association stores its metadata using IPFS rather than fully on-chain. This poses a common challenge to visually rich metadata projects, as the smart contracts and the metadata are separate. 

According to Blocksec, the Association had a contract vulnerability that was exploited to allow non-whitelisted users to mint the NFT by copying the signature of whitelisted users. 

The development team has acknowledged this vulnerability, but no solution has been officially confirmed.

  • Audit status: no audits performed yet
  • Storage: The Association NFTs are stored as ERC-721 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain, and visuals live on IPFS for immutable ownership.

Whale Wallet Analysis

The Association currently has a Unique Holders Ratio of 31%, indicating a relatively concentrated collection. At 1.64%, its whale concentration is relatively low. There are no well-known NFT flippers or influencers among the top five holders. The combination of these stats indicates that many users hold multiple NFTs, but that there are no significant whales that influence considerable price fluctuations.

Summary 

The Association is experiencing some growing pains. The collection is officially licensed and developed by the NBA. However, unlike NBA’s previous highly successful project NBA Top Shot, the Association is developed without Dapper Labs and is not based on the Flow blockchain.

A few days after the project launched, a contract vulnerability was exploited to allow non-whitelisted users to mint NFTs, which negatively impacted sales. Despite this, the Association is the 14th most traded collection with a volume of over $13 million. These numbers are much higher when compared to NBA Top Shot at the same time after launch. For reference, it took NBA Top Shot four months to reach $1 million in sales volume and six months to surpass a volume of $13 million.   

The actual test of a good project is how they pick themselves up after falling. The Association is still in its nascent stage, being only one week old at writing. Once the security issues are resolved, and the art released, the Association could see a turnaround as a ready audience wants to trade in this collection, evidenced by the high number of unique traders and a well-populated Discord. 

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