Discover the NFT project that led sports fans to first join the digital collectibles world
Collecting valuable player cards is nothing new. For decades, fans have kept their favorite players in their memory and on the home shelf. But when the NBA decided to take this wave to the Flow blockchain, they took the fan experience to another level. Meet NBA Top Shot, a project that broke NFT volume sales records and became a milestone in the history of Web3.
Table of Contents
- What is NBA Top Shot?
- Who created NBA Top Shot?
- How do NBA Top Shot NFTs work?
- Why is the NBA Top Shot NFT collection so successful?
- What can I do with an NBA Top Shot NFT?
- How much do NBA Top Shot NFTs cost?
- Where can I buy and sell NBA Top Shot NFTs?
- What’s next for sports NFTs?
- Keep learning about NFTs with DappRadar
What is NBA Top Shot?
NBA Top Shot is an NFT collectibles project that immortalizes key moments from basketball games in videos stored on a blockchain.
Much like traditional basketball cards that fans can buy, keep, or trade for millions of dollars, these NFTs enhance the community experience – and generate a lot of speculation.
The first collection was launched in July 2019 and immediately became a success. However, the biggest boom came in early 2021, when $50 million in sales made NBA Top Shot the largest NFT marketplace.
You can read the biggest news we’ve followed from NBA Top Shot over the years on DappRadar. But before that, let’s proceed with our learning path.
What are NFTs?
NFTs stand for non-fungible tokens and are a new way to store unique information with safety and irreversibility. These tokens are stored on a blockchain and represent digital or physical assets, also storing their trading history. NFTs can be photos, videos, songs, and so on, and some can even change over time.
As reported by the Guardian, collectors spent over $22 billion on NFTs in 2021. Although most NFT collections are now no longer of public interest and therefore have evaporated considerably in price, owners believe they are holding something valuable.
Who created NBA Top Shot?
The idea of allowing fans to collect basketball highlights through NFTs was jointly realized by the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA), with the leading Web3 company Dapper Labs.
It was built on Dapper Labs’ Flow blockchain and has launched new collections since 2019 to widen the community.
How do NBA Top Shot NFTs work?
Unlike most of the famous NFT collections, NBA Top Shot aren’t generative images you can use on your profile picture. Instead, they are recordings of highlights of the games – videos – but work the same way as other static NFTs do.
The video information is stored in each NFT smart contract on the Flow blockchain. Each contains certain characteristics, or metadata, that influence its rarity and value.
It cannot be altered, and the sales history is saved forever on the blockchain for all to see, as well as to and from which wallets.
In other words, when you buy one of these NFTs and have it safely stored in your crypto wallet, that moment is officially yours to keep, and so are the utilities that come with it.
Why is the NBA Top Shot NFT collection so successful?
As you can see from the statistics on DappRadar, the NBA Top Shot collections have generated, from the launch to the time of writing, 19,866,603 sales to 567,630 traders. With an average value of $48.71 per collectible, sales volume has already exceeded $967.72 million.
These numbers take the NBA Top Shot decentralized application to the top of the DappRadar Top Collectibles Dapps Ranking months after the NFT bull run of early 2022.
But what made this sport NFT project so successful? In addition to the strong team behind the project, responsible for other successes on Web3 such as CryptoKitties, NBA Top Shot also had investments from big names outside the cryptoverse.
In addition, having the NBA as a backer gave NFT newcomers more confidence that the project was really an investment opportunity and not a scam. Many people have acquired NFTs for the first time thanks to NBA Top Shot and the ease of the purchase process.
Dozens of celebrities have also joined the NBA Top Shot community by purchasing their own NFTs from the collection – which only helped the project’s reputation. Among the most well-known names of collectors are Michael Jordan, Mark Cuban, and Kevin Durant.
What can I do with an NBA Top Shot NFT?
Even though most people would want to get their NBA Top Shot NFTs simply for collecting them, there are much more perks to enhance owners’ experience.
As stated on the official website, owners get to:
“Participate in challenges to earn incredible new Moments and get rewarded just for what’s in your collection with once-in-a-lifetime VIP events, access to NBA games, and so much more.”
How much do NBA Top Shot NFTs cost?
The value of NFTs, like everything connected to blockchain technology, is subject to fluctuations. However, some collections such as the NBA Top Shot are more stable than average and are therefore called blue-chip NFTs.
Still, the value of NBA TopShot NFTs varies greatly according to the NFT’s rarity and fan interest in the player, teams, series, tiers, and so on.
Have a look below at the most expensive sales ever, available on the NBA Top Shot Dapp Page:
Even though the average price of an NBA Top Shot NFT is $48,71 at the time of writing, the rarest ones have been sold for as high as $210,000.
- Read further: How to value NBA Top Shot NFTs
Where can I buy and sell NBA Top Shot NFTs?
NBA Top Shot NFTs are available for sale on their official marketplace. You can buy and sell the NFTs there for US dollars, but also cryptocurrencies like FLOW, ETH, BTC, BCH, DAI, and USDC.
The NBA Top Shot marketplace is quite comprehensive and allows you to filter NFTs according to their players, series, price, team, and even player position. There you can also find NFTs of the WNBA collection – Women’s National Basketball Association.
On each listing page, you can also see how many times each NFT has been traded in the last 60 days, as well as its average and top sale prices.
It is also worth noting that there are new series of NFTs to be released according to the current basketball season. So, depending on the moment you want to join the project, you can buy, in addition to single NFTs in the marketplace, packs of NFTs that contain surprise NFTs.
Before buying and collecting, however, you should research well the risks of investing in NFTs and figure out a strategy of your own. If you want to purchase a collectible to trade, you should have some things in mind, while if you just want to keep it as memorabilia, others.
What is WBNA Top Shot NFT?
Launched in August 2021, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) NFT collection follows pretty much the same idea as the first project. Fans can collect the best in-game moments of the women’s championships with video NFTs.
It is yet another interesting project that promises to increase the presence and representation of women in the NFT space, as well as collections such as World of Women and Boss Beauties.
If you’re a fan, you can keep the highlights of players like Sue Bird, A’Ja Wilson, Sylvia Fowles, and Sabrina Ionescu in your Flow wallet.
What’s next for sports NFTs?
There’s no doubt that NBA Top Shot has changed the way the general public views NFTs, particularly by bringing together the worlds of sport and Web3.
Fans have much more to gain thanks to collections like this as they invest. And this trend has already given rise to several other similar projects in other sports, such as Sorare, UFC Strike, and so on.
The next step for the entire NFT space, however, is to continue evolving technology and user experience. More utility to value ownership, and also associating NFTs with gaming could mark the future of projects like NBA Top Shot. In fact, it’s already been real with the launch of another NBA project, The Association – of dynamic NFTs.
Either way, we at DappRadar will continue to follow NBA Top Shot’s trajectory leading the biggest NFT projects out there to keep you up to date.
Keep learning about NFTs with DappRadar
We hope you enjoyed getting to know about this amazing NFT project. If you’re interested in learning even more about NFTs, check out our blog and Youtube channel for awesome educational content.
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The above does not constitute investment advice. The information given here is purely for informational purposes only. Please exercise due diligence and do your own research.
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