NFT Sports Cards Explained (Read Before Buying)

It seems only yesterday when headlines of sports trading cards selling for millions of dollars spotlighted the lucrative world of collectible cards. 

To recap the highest flying sales:

  1. A 1952 Topps SGC 9.5 Mickey Mantle card sold for $12.6 million
  2. A T206 SGC 2 Honus Wagner sold for $7.25 million
  3. The  LeBron James 2003-04 Rookie Patch Auto sold for $5.2 million. 
  4. Patrick Mahomes 2017 Rookie Auto BGS 8.5 sold for $4.3 million.
  5. Luka Doncic 1:1 Logoman Auto sold for $4.6 million

And the list goes on, often to the incredulity of the average person still digesting the idea that even classical art can fetch multi-million dollar price tags.

Throw NFTs, these intangible digital collectibles, into the mix, and it seems people’s incredulity grows to almost shocked disbelief. 

NFT sports cards were inevitable– attach the high value placed on limited edition collectible cards to a 24/7/365 digital marketplace, and you’ve got a powerful combination. 

The following guide explores the ins and outs of NFT sports cards.

NFT Sports Cards 101: A Quick Summary of NFTs

To best understand how NFT sports cards work, it’s essential to firmly grasp the NFT concept. 

A non-fungible token is a cryptocurrency that is unlike any other– hence its non-fungibility. 

For most practical purposes, one bitcoin will always equal one bitcoin, in the same way, one quarter will always equal one quarter. 

However, let’s say we have two houses with identical floorplans– but one is on the beach, and the other is in a regular suburb. In most markets, the beachfront house might be worth triple or even ten times the amount of its less-breezy twin. 

Similarly, the NFT token standard enables tokens to hold unique characteristics– which are priced accordingly by the market. 

The holder of the NFT owns what is essentially the deed to the digital trading card and can sell it whenever.

In more technical terms, the NFT owner holds the token in a cryptocurrency wallet; their private key is what signals to the blockchain that they are the owner of the wallet and its contents, enabling them to trade as they please. 

There are no physical tokens or coins that represent the NFT– it’s all digital, and your private key is what communicates your ownership of the NFT. 

Exploring the NFT Sports Card World

Today’s most popular NFT sports card platforms are essentially the issuers of a specific collection.

For example, NBA Top Shot is the officially licensed platform of NBA collectibles. NBA Top Shot project took the cryptocurrency world by storm when Dapper Labs launched it in October 2020, introducing many of its crypto-savvy collectors to the future of NFTs. 

Dapper Labs is also known for its viral CryptoKitties project in 2017, seeing several CryptoKitties reach six-figure sales. 

In addition to NBA Top Shot, Dapper Labs also has NFL All Day and UFC Strike. 

In just a few short months, NBA Top Shot attracted over $123 million in sales. In 2022, NBA Top Shot Labs reached over $1.03 billion in secondary market trades. 

Dapper Labs takes a 5% royalty fee on secondary NFT sales of its marketplace; so, in theory, Dapper Labs made about $50,000,000 from its users trading its NFTs with each other. 

In contrast to physical sports cards, NFT sports cards are able to include additional rarity features; NBA Top Shot uses different tiers like Legendary, Rare, Fandom, and Common.

NBA Top Shot introduced the most polished NFT sports experience in 2020, paving the road for several new NFT sports card marketplaces today. 

SoRare is a competing NFT marketplace and issuer that initially started with football (of the round ball sort) NFTs, and has expanded to MBA and MLB NFTs. 

However, in addition to purely holding SoRare cards for collection’s sake, collectors can play in twice-weekly global competitions or against friends in private leagues. Using the cards for their collections, players can submit either five-player lineups (for football & NBA) or a seven-player lineup (MLB) in free competitions. 

SoRare players can also earn rewards such as digital player cards, merchandise, match tickets, ETH, or even meeting their star athletes– all based on their squad’s real-life performance– similar to a fantasy league.

NFT Sports Cards: Considerations

Chances are that one top question in your head comes from this line of logic: well, if seemingly anyone can launch an NFT, wouldn’t the market just become supersaturated with NFT sports cards, basically commoditizing the asset class?

Correct. However, this isn’t much different from how real-life companies can start pumping out specific trading cards, provided they have adequate licensing and legal agreements with the organizations.

Similarly, sports organizations tend to sign non-exclusive licensing agreements with NFT platforms– similar to how SoRare and NBA Top Shot are competing companies offering NBA NFTs. However, SoRare offers a gaming aspect, whereas NBA Top Shot seems to be strictly collection-oriented.

We can expect to see more NFT sports card marketplaces and issuers arise with different functionalities. 

Autograph, for example, is a platform that enables famous athletes and celebrities to turn their real-life experiences into NFTs, giving them a direct link to add personal touches to the digital collectibles distributed to fans. 

Rather than a simple static image or . GIF, Autograph NFTs are typically customized high-graphic digital representations, such as interactive posters, digital action figures of iconic game highlights, and more. 

The Autograph team counts a star-studded array of celebrity athlete partners, like Tom Brady, Simone Biles, Tiger Woods, Derek Jeter, Wayne Gretzky, and Tony Hawk. 

However, NFTs come with additional considerations their physical counterparts don’t.

For one, the underlying blockchain adds another distinctive category type. While the bulk of NFT sports cards (in terms of market share, volume, and popularity) are on Ethereum’s blockchain, there are competitors emerging on blockchains like Solana, Polygon, Flow, and even Cardano. 

Final Thoughts: The Future of NFT Sports Cards

Bear or bull market, the underlying value proposition of NFT sports cards remains the same– collect digital assets representing your favorite athletes similar to how you’d collect physical cards. 

With a few billion dollars in primary and secondary volume, NFT sports cards are a smaller yet still dominant representation of NFT’s potential. 

 It’s not a stretch to assume we’re in the early innings of how far NFT sports cards can go; platforms like NBA Top Shot, SoRare, and Autograph have raised and are implementing over a billion dollars of cumulative funding to build their NFT offering

However, potential NFT sports cards holders should be mindful their digital holdings come with more nuanced responsibilities, such as protecting your holdings from hackers (and yourself) with adequate cryptocurrency wallet security and digital hygiene– as well as the underlying risks of the very risky cryptocurrency world.

Disney NFTs Explained

Disney, one of the world’s largest mass media producers, entered the world of non-fungible tokens in 2021 by creating NFT collections from their iconic characters. 

Disney NFTs, which include the company’s intellectual property and acquired franchises such as The Simpson, are showcased on VeVe —a marketplace that licenses and showcases NFTs from some of the most important companies from different industries.

Disney NFT Collections on VeVe

On November 2021, Disney launched their first NFT collection: the “Disney Golden Moments NFTs,” in celebration of Disney Day. The collection, as the name suggests, comprises some of the most popular moments from iconic characters in the company’s history, showcasing Elsa from Frozen, Iron Man, and at the top of the collection is Walt Disney holding hands with Mickey Mouse.

Disney NFTs sold out almost immediately at launch, like most collections from VeVe’s marketplace, considering they are from some of the world’s most important companies in mass media. However, Disney adopted a “Blind box” method on dorp day, requiring buyers to open a box to see their purchase. Most of the NFTs within the collection were priced at $60, with the value of some of these NFTs reaching $2000.

VeVe features three types of rareness for Disney NFTs. As part of the Golden Moments collection, there were 4,333 ultra-rare statues of Walt Disney holding Micky Mouse’s hand, each with a list price of 333 Gems ($333). Each purchase of a Partners Statue grants the customer a twelve-month subscription to Disney+ courtesy of VeVe.

On VeVe, we can find the full catalog of Disney’s NFTs, including collections from Star Wars, Cars, and Toy Story to single NFTs characters from Marvel, Alice in Wonderland, and The Simpsons.

On April 8, 2023, Disney launched the Disneyland Resort Posters collection, which celebrates the original artwork used to create Disneyland resort posters from the early days of the Tomorrowland area.

Source: VeVe

Disney’s Start Wars NFT Collection

The Star Wars NFT collection is one of Disney’s best-selling NFT collections on VeVe. Popular characters like C3PO and R2-D2 were the first to be showcased on the platform. Darth Vader soon followed with three different poses, but one of them is Ultra Rare, and it’s Vader doing an animated Force choke.

Pixar NFTs

Disney acquired Pixar in 2006, and with the Pixar family having some of the world’s most beloved animated characters in history, Disney made sure to add it to its Golden Moments NFT collection on VeVe. Similar to other NFTs, they were priced at $60, with their value skyrocketing 400% on secondary marketplaces.

On March 2022, Disney decided to double down on Pixar characters with the PIXAR PALS series, which comprises collections with over 50,000 NFTs combined that sold out immediately, auctioned in blind boxes at $60 each. 

The PIXAR PALS series generated an estimated $3.3 million in revenue. Wall-E, Sheriff Woody, Edna Mode, and more iconic characters from Pixar were showcased on VeVe as hand-painted digital art.

One of them is the Woody collection “Hey Howdy Hey!” consisting of 13,999 NFTs, priced at $60 with a Common rarity, with Woody rendered as a 3D NFT.

Marvel NFTs

Disney launched its Marvel NFT collection as a comic series released weekly by VeVe, each with their own level of rarity: Common for the original cover and Uncommon for black and white versions of the original comics.

Marvel Premiere #21 featuring Iron Fist

Marvel NFTs aren’t just covers of the original comic books —the comics can be read by browsing the pages on PC or iOS/Android devices.

Disney Mickey Mouse NFT Collection – Mr. Mouse

Naturally, Disney’s appearance in the NFT realm wouldn’t be complete without its long-time mascot, Mickey Mouse. The Mr. Mouse series dropped on December 24th using the Blind box method.

A total of four series were launched, with Series 4 featuring three collections; 

  • Hitchin’ A Ride, 3D animated collectibles comprising 2,940 rare NFTs priced at $60
  • A Close Call, 1,340 ultra-rare NFTs at $60;
  • All Aboard!, 940 secret rare 3D figures with Mickey hoping on a departing train, priced at $60.

Holders of the three series were airdropped a “Mickey’s Signature,” a unique NFT collectible, as a gift. 

How to Buy Disney NFTs

To buy a Disney NFT on VeVe, you first need to sign up and install the VeVe app (if you’re using the mobile version). Thereon, you can only buy/sell NFTs using the platform’s currency, Gems, which equals one US dollar. You can buy Gems using Apple Pay or Google Pay. The fees by the credit card provider, bank, or PayPal apply (and unlike cryptocurrency, you cannot sell Gems off-market.)

Secondary market fees on all Disney sales apply; VeVe charges a 6% licensor fee on top of the existing VeVe 2.5% fee for each secondary sale.

Final Thoughts: Future of Disney NFTs

Disney NFTs were some of the biggest news for the NFT ecosystem in 2021. A company that size attracted even more eyes to a flourishing ecosystem that was already seeing an influx of high-profile companies creating their own digital collections.

The mass media giant remained active for the following years after launching their first collection in 2021, all during Bob Iger’s absence, who worked as its CEO for 15 years. However, with the return of Iger on November 2022, Disney could double down on NFTs and Web3 for 2023. 

On March 2022, Igor joined Genies, an NFT platform on Dapper Lab’s Flow blockchain. He stated that the Web3 market offers “extraordinary” possibilities for Disney. “When you think about all the copyright and trademarks, characters Disney has, and the NFT possibility, they’re extraordinary, said Iger to the Hollywood Reporter.

NFT Airdrops Explained: What Are They & How Do They Work?

NFT airdrops refer to the distribution of an NFT for free to a community or a group of whitelisted individuals. It’s a popular method for NFT projects, artists, and blockchain gaming apps to promote a new NFT collection to the public, draw attention to a new brand, or engage with their communities by handing out rewards.

While NFT airdrops are often free, they usually require users to hold a specific type of NFT to be eligible for the airdrop. This happens when a project announces an upgrade, a sidekick, a special package, etc., that benefits the holder and promotes a new collection as well.

How NFT Airdrops Work

Projects and creators often distribute NFTs by creating a new collection or sidekick by minting the NFTs and sending them to a particular group of wallets. They can also use a portion of the minted supply on later occasions. 

Either way, the idea is to promote hype for that new collection, drive public awareness of the brand, or add value to the existing NFT collection. Likewise, early holders can claim a new NFT, and others have the chance to receive a new token by just doing a few tasks and at a much lower cost compared to the minting stage prices.

Creators usually promote NFT airdrops through their websites and social media channels. A particular set of tasks is outlined to claim the airdrop, such as sharing the post or tagging friends on social media, interacting with the community, creating social media posts or blogs about the airdrop.

The most common types of NFT and general airdrops are:

  • Holder airdrop: these are the most common airdrops, in which projects send NFTs to wallet addresses holding a specific NFT or cryptocurrency. Generally, the more tokens the user has in their wallet, the more NFTs they receive. 
  • Standard airdrop: these are limited NFTs in terms of quantity and time. Users are not required to perform any specific task rather than creating an account and connecting their public crypto wallets to the website. 
  • Exclusive Airdrop: this type of airdrop is a way of rewarding loyal holders who, besides holding the token for an extended period, have attended exclusive IRL events, interacted with the community, and contributed to the collection in some way. Exclusive airdrops are not meant to be confused with bounty airdrops, which are open to everyone to participate.
  • Raffle airdrop: rare NFTs distributed to a few selected individuals. In this airdrop, a creator will form groups using users’ crypto wallets and whitelist them before randomly choosing the winners. In order to participate, users typically have to sign up to the airdrop or perform a series of tasks. 

Examples of Successful NFT Airdrops 

For example, holders of Bored Ape NFTs received a digital vial of mutant serum, which turned their Bored Apes into Mutant Apes: Yuga Lab’s second project. In other words, Bored Apes holders received an NFT airdrop that changed their original NFT.

Mutant Ape #28566. Source: OpenSea

In late April 2022, Chiru Labs announced the launch of Beanz, an airdrop collection of 19,950 NFTs that function as sidekicks to Azuki NFTs. On the day of launch, the highest selling bean sold for 90 ETH, or roughly 250k in that time. 

However, the chances of an airdropped NFT becoming highly valuable in the near future are low, unless we’re talking about NFT projects that have a well-established position in the space. The success of a new NFT collection will highly depend on several factors, including utility, rareness, reputation, exclusive benefits, and membership perks in the community, to name a few.

How to Claim an NFT Airdrop 

NFT airdrops will have different mechanics depending on the creator, but you’ll need a cryptocurrency wallet that supports the specific blockchain and NFT you want to receive. MetaMask and EVM-compatible wallets are the most popular options in this case. You must either provide your public address to the project or connect your wallet to the project’s claim site.

When you visit the airdrop page, you will likely find a set of tasks and rules to perform and follow to get a chance to claim the NFT airdrop. Other times, you don’t need to do anything as the creator already has your wallet and will sort it together with other addresses.

Where to Find NFT Airdrops?

You can find NFT airdrops by following closely NFT projects on their social media or websites to be as early as possible at the time they announce upcoming airdrops. You can also check out aggregators like CoinMarketCap or NFT news sites that usually provide long lists of airdrops.

Safety Tips Before Participating in Airdrops

Beware of random NFT airdrops coming into your crypto wallet. If you receive an NFT or any other token with no verifiable source, it’s likely a scam. In this case, do not sell, trade, or interact with it. 

NFT airdrops are an extension of an already established community, so double-check the airdropped token and see if the source matches with the original creator.

Here are a few rules to follow:

  • Only provide your public wallet address to verifiable projects but never your private keys, seed phrase, or personal credentials. If a project is asking you for any of these, it’s a scam.
  • Make sure you double-check the project’s legitimacy before connecting your wallet to the website or DApp. Scammers will always copy a project’s marketing content, websites, and landing pages to trick people into believing they are legit. Check the URL and any changes in the website’s direction or name.
  • It’s always better to use an empty NFT wallet, as the scammer won’t have anything to steal if you ever fall victim to one.
  • Verify that the tasks you need to perform don’t require handing over personal information.
  • If the task involves sending money or crypto to a specific wallet, it’s a scam.
  • Ignore NFT airdrops sent to your DM – usually scammers or dubious and low-quality NFT projects.

Final Thoughts

Airdrops are similar to being a regular customer in a grocery store and receiving a special treat for all the years you’ve been buying from them, or getting an offer from supermarkets; buy one and get one for free at a later date.

They are a popular way of engaging with communities, driving brand awareness to Web3/NFT projects, or adding value to existing projects; mostly because they’re easy to carry out, cheap, and allow creators to test the community’s reaction to certain types of projects. Airdrops are often seen a win-win for both sides, as they benefit users with new assets without doing too much in return.

Monet 1.2 Testnet Release

Introducing the final phase of the Monet 1.2 Testnet, now live!

As we strive to achieve our goals, Monet 1.2 represents a critical milestone among several other planned releases for 2023. This release brings substantial enhancements to our Supernode infrastructure, major updates to Cascade (our permanent NFT data storage solution), and Sense (our duplicate detection technology).

Specific upgrade milestones include:

  • Integration of Supernode Storage Challenges to Cascade
  • Activation of Cascade’s Self-Healing capability
  • Activation of Supernode Health and State Challenges
  • Stabilization of Sense Protocol
  • Release of the OpenAPI Gateway

Monet 1.2 demonstrates our commitment and passion for developing the best blockchain for Web3 infrastructure across the ecosystem.

Keep reading for more details on the specific features of Monet 1.2 and upcoming plans for the Mainnet release.

Full stable release source code is available here.

 

Storage Challenges: Proof of Storage

One of the most compelling aspects of Pastel Network’s storage layer, Cascade, is the trustless decentralization of data storage. In Pastel, data is fragmented and randomly distributed across validators (Supernodes) operating the network. Monet 1.2 introduces Supernode Storage Challenges to further promote trustless data decentralization.

In simple terms, Storage Challenges involve Supernodes “quizzing” each other at random to ensure they are storing the required files, using a novel Proof of Storage mechanism. If a Supernode fails a Proof of Storage challenge or does not respond, they will be penalized through slashing and loss of network income.

These core concepts are fundamental to the broader Pastel Network:

  • Trustless — Trust no network participant other than yourself, assuming that others may be unreliable or malicious.
  • Distributed — Operations like Storage Challenges are performed by multiple active, randomly selected validators.
  • Verify — The outcomes of Storage Challenge operations are verified by other fair network operators, and those verifications are further checked (Bob performs a task, Alice verifies the task to the network, Eve double-checks Alice’s verification).
  • Open — Supernodes broadcast their Storage Challenges to the entire network, ensuring transparency.
  • Deterministic — Each aspect of our Proof of Storage is deterministically executed as explicitly prescribed by the underlying protocol using XOR rankings and entropy from mining.

Incorporating Storage Challenges enables us to create a robust mechanism for continually verifying and validating the contents of Cascade. This ensures that Supernode operators either remain compliant or face penalties for violating the protocol (through slashing and network bans), further safeguarding the decentralization of files stored on the network.

For a deeper understanding of how Storage Challenges are implemented, we encourage you to review and contribute to our public repo.

Self-Healing Data

Storage Challenges in Cascade ensure the ongoing permanence and decentralization of data across active and compliant Supernodes. But even with Proof of Storage, what if the number of active Supernodes holding the underlying, redundant pieces of a particular file changes to the point where the entire file cannot be sufficiently reconstructed? Monet 1.2 activates the innovative concept of Self-Healing to further promote ongoing data permanence.

Cascade’s disruptive “over-provisioning” capability generates more pieces and copies of data than strictly required to reconstruct the original data. These chunks are not standard disjoint segments of data like BitTorrent but are many versions of each chunk, making them fungible. These fungible chunks of data are called symbol files.

For example, Cascade can turn a 1MB file into 12MB of 50KB symbol files. And because symbol files are each fungible, Cascade only needs to collect 1MB worth of the different 50KB files to reconstruct the original file. By generating more symbol files than necessary and by ensuring that each symbol is truly being stored via Storage Challenges, Cascade guarantees any file can be reconstructed.

In addition to over-provisioning, Cascade further reduces the risk of data loss with additional redundancy by requiring each symbol file to be stored by the 5 Supernodes that are closest to it using XOR distance. XOR is a deterministic algorithm used to define the distance between the PastelID identifier string for each active Supernode and the hash of the previous block. The Supernode’s PastelID that is “closest” to this previous block hash is then considered the “winner.” In the case of these symbol files, the 5 closest Supernodes are the winners.

However, what if these 5 Supernodes storing a set of symbol files suddenly leave the network at the same time, so that there is no chance to conduct a “handoff” of responsibility to other SNs that remain in the network? This is where self-healing comes into play.

There is a specific “seed” property in Cascade that is stored in the Pastel blockchain protocol itself. The seed enables Cascade to, after the fact, use the complete copy of the file (which can be verified by comparing it to the file’s hash — also stored directly in the Pastel blockchain) to reconstruct any of the files from the list of symbol files that were originally created. This means that Cascade can never truly lose any of the symbol files “forever” so long as the original file can be reconstructed correctly.

In practice, we use this to incorporate this concept such that whenever a symbol file goes missing, it is regenerated and redistributed to the network of Supernodes in the same way as all other symbol files: the 5 closest Supernodes to each symbol file must store each of the regenerated files.

Cascade’s self-healing property minimizes the probability of a permanent, irrecoverable loss of data through intrinsic storage redundancy.

To better understand the concept of Self Healing in practice, we encourage you to review and contribute to our public repo.

Other Features in Monet 1.2

In addition to Storage Challenges and Self-Healing, we are excited to share that Monet 1.2 will also bring the following features to Mainnet:

  • Activation of Supernode Health and State Challenges: Similar to Proof of Storage, Health & State Challenges will guarantee the ongoing active and enabled state of each Supernode client on the network.
  • Stabilization of Sense Protocol: Improvements to Chrome Driver usage, updates to Webtools 1.3, and implementation of additional tickets.
  • Release of the OpenAPI Gateway: Production-ready Gateway will be deployed via the Mainnet with support for a number of new endpoints, asynchronous execution, Ansible support for independent deployment, and a graphical user interface for interaction.

Our Monet 1.2 Testnet Release source-code can be reviewed here.

Monet 1.2 Mainnet Release

The Pastel Network team and community are engaged in comprehensive testing of every aspect of the current release. This is to ensure that all functionalities are running smoothly, without any bugs or glitches, and can withstand different environmental and network state conditions. After rigorous unit-level, integration-based, and protocol-level stress testing, we will start upgrading existing Miners, SuperNodes, and WalletNodes, ultimately leading to the release of Monet 1.2 Mainnet.

To prepare for this release, community members will receive prior notification to upgrade their existing infrastructure to the latest release, before a specific blockHeight. Further information on the Monet 1.2 Mainnet Release will be shared soon. Stay tuned for updates.

Follow us on TwitterDiscordTelegram, & Reddit for the most up-to-date Pastel news!

About Pastel Network

Pastel Network is a fully decentralized, developer-friendly layer-1 blockchain serving as the preeminent protocol standard for non-fungible tokens (“NFTs”) and Web3 technology.

Pastel allows for the development of third-party decentralized-applications (“DApps”) to sit on top of its Network, enabling developers to enjoy the scalable registration features, storage processes, and security of the broader ecosystem. Lightweight protocols such as Sense — which was built to assess the relative rareness of a given NFT against near-duplicate metadata — and Cascade — which conducts permanent, distributed storage of underlying NFT data — can be integrated cross-chain across various layer-1 blockchains, layer-2 protocols, or other third-party apps.

Pastel is managed by world-class developers, cryptographers, and technologists, supported alongside an experienced and extensive network of marketers, influencers, and third-party agencies. Pastel is backed by key stakeholders including Innovating Capital, a prominent venture fund.

For more information on Pastel Network, visit https://pastel.network/.

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