Category: News

Blur’s NFT Market Domination

Posted on by Tiffany Behnam

Blur.io has taken the NFT marketplace by storm since its launch in October 2022. The platform has quickly become the largest trading platform for NFTs by volume, with a user-friendly interface that caters more to professional NFT traders than retail users.

Unlike other marketplaces, Blur offers batch shelf and floor-sweeping transactions in addition to order book NFT transactions, allowing traders to make batch operations more conveniently (buying NFTs with the lowest price at once). Buyers can not only browse NFTs on Blur but also on other NFT marketplaces and place orders directly through Blur with instant liquidity.

In terms of fees, Blur has a very trader-friendly fee structure and does not charge any transaction fees for users on the platform. In terms of royalties, which are mandatory for a certain percentage of secondary transactions on other marketplaces, Blur recommends a default royalty rate of 0.5% for buyers. However, this can be customized and even set to 0 if the user wishes. Overall, Blur.io offers a more convenient and cost-effective platform for professional NFT traders.

Blur was founded by PacmanBlur, an MIT-graduate and member of the Peter Thiel Fellowship. The product was built in conjunction with support from leading venture capitalists, such as Paradigm. The platform recently completed its $BLUR token airdrop after Season 1 of the incentivization program finished. Users were rewarded ‘Care Packages’ for providing liquidity and trading on the platform, which were available to be opened on the 14th of February. Some traders earned up to $3 million in $BLUR tokens and the project launched at an eye-watering $400 million valuation.

Blur has minted 3 billion BLUR tokens, which will be made accessible over 4 to 5 years. The token allocation is divided into 51% for the community, 29% for past and future core contributors, 19% for investors, and 1% for advisors. A community treasury of 360m BLUR tokens, equivalent to 12% of the total token supply, can be claimed by NFT traders, historical users of Blur, and creators.

The community treasury will distribute 39% of the BLUR supply through contributor grants, community initiatives, and incentive programs, with 10% allocated to the next incentive release. The vesting of BLUR tokens will occur continuously according to a set schedule for each group of token recipients.

Blur has grown to become the largest NFT Marketplace in the world with the help of their incentives program. It has successfully flipped OpenSea within 6 months of release due to its user-friendly UI, low fees, and deeper liquidity for NFTs. The platform boasts impressive stats with over 400,000 active users and $1.4 billion in traded volume according to Dune Analytics.

The Blur platform runs ten times faster than other NFT aggregators, displays the pending transactions on the NFT in less than one second, and updates the list every four seconds. The fast display of pending transactions, together with the nearly real-time metadata update on the collection art display, constitutes a huge advantage for users who want to quickly come in and out. In addition, Blur’s gas priority preset can help traders to outperform the competitors who purchase NFT through other exchanges or aggregators. Most importantly, the contract in Blur is more optimized than that in other markets, saving up to 17% on gas fees.

Another popular feature of Blur is that it can clearly show the rarity of different NFTs and the floor price under specific attributes. Rather than using sales history or a series list to evaluate NFTs that are priced higher than the floor price, Blur’s platform instead searches for the lowest priced NFTs based on their individual characteristics. This function can greatly simplify the process of finding undervalued NFTs, and thus it has become one of the main reasons why collectors and investors are drawn to Blur.

Additionally, the Blur team has also put a lot of effort into improving the user experience of their platform. The website is user-friendly, visually appealing, and easy to navigate, which makes it accessible to even those who are new to the world of NFTs. The team has also made sure that the platform is secure, reliable, and can handle a high volume of transactions without any technical glitches or issues. This has resulted in a seamless experience for users, which has contributed to the platform’s success.

Comparison to other platforms

Blur has emerged as a dominant player in the NFT marketplace due to its unique features, user-friendly interface, and emphasis on security and reliability. With the growing popularity of NFTs, it will be interesting to see how Blur continues to innovate and stay ahead of the competition in the coming years.

The launch of Blur has immediately pushed OpenSea to launch OpenSea Pro, their version of an aggregator. OpenSea Pro aims to compete with this by offering a similar experience, but with added benefits.

One of the key features of OpenSea Pro is its advanced search capabilities. Users can filter and sort through millions of NFTs with ease, making it easier to find exactly what they’re looking for. It also offers better curation tools, enabling collectors to create and manage collections of their favorite NFTs.

OpenSea Pro also boasts faster transaction times and lower gas fees than the regular OpenSea platform. This is due to its integration with a Layer 2 solution called Polygon. Transactions on Polygon are faster and cheaper than on the Ethereum network, which is the main blockchain used by OpenSea.

Another advantage of OpenSea Pro is its dedicated customer support team. OpenSea has received criticism in the past for its lack of customer support, and OpenSea Pro aims to address this by offering a dedicated team that is available to answer questions and resolve issues.

OpenSea Pro is currently in beta, but it’s already making waves in the NFT community. Its advanced features and improved user experience make it a strong competitor to other platforms, including Blur. If you’re an NFT collector or seller, it’s definitely worth checking out.

Pastel Network is teaming up with Astar to bring NFT security and NFT data permanence to the Web3 Ecosystem

Posted on by Tiffany Behnam

Pastel Network is excited to announce that it will be working with Astar, a layer1 parachain in the Polkadot ecosystem. Astar provides the infrastructure for building dApps with EVM and WASM smart contracts offering developers true interoperability with cross-consensus messaging (XCM) and a cross-virtual machine (XVM). Astar and Pastel will collaborate with the goal of providing Pastel’s Web3 tooling solutions — Sense and Cascade — to its NFT ecosystem. This collaboration signifies the continued successes of both Pastel and Astar, and is a massive step forward for the overall NFT ecosystem. It is a testament to the growing need for NFT reliability, security and verifiability, solved via Pastel’s advanced infrastructure.

What is Pastel Network?

Pastel Network provides mission critical Web3 tooling to the NFT ecosystem. Pastel infrastructure enables existing layer-1 blockchains, decentralized applications, or third-party enterprises to protect creators and collectors. From digital collectibles & media to documents & applications, users and developers are able to certify asset rareness and truly store data forever. Lightweight protocols delivered by interoperable open APIs such as Sense and Cascade can be easily integrated across existing networks.

Pastel’s near-duplicate detection system, Sense, is a deep-learning based system that assesses the relative rareness between NFTs, which is used to detect scams / copyright infringement and provide certification of authenticity.

Pastel’s storage solution, Cascade, is a fully-distributed storage protocol that ensures permanent NFT data storage. Every validator (Supernodes) on the Pastel network holds a random, fragmented copy of data, ensuring that a user will never lose their NFTs. It is a pay once and store forever model that prevents centralized points of failure, ongoing maintenance, IPFS link rots, or 404 errors.

What will this collaboration entail?

Pastel is bringing its very powerful and lightweight infrastructure, Sense and Cascade, to the Astar Ecosystem. We will also have collaborative marketing efforts to push for the growth and adoption of Astar as well as the push for builders to use Pastel’s tooling in the ecosystem.

Sense enables marketplaces or NFT projects to certify the rareness of the NFTs. It also allows marketplace builders to drastically reduce the need for manual verification of NFTs and collections being minted on the platform. This provides an additional method of determining rarity based on image rather than through metadata characteristics. For creators, the rarity score allows for their artwork to be protected from plagiarism while it boosts confidence in making NFT purchases for collectors.

Cascade creates an environment where builders will never need to be concerned with long-term storage costs or the process of renewing contracts with storage solution providers. Cascade over-provisions the data and has self-healing properties to ensure data integrity and permanence. Builders can now pay once and store data forever. Additionally, NFT related projects have the guarantee that NFTs minted can be stored in a permanent manner which provides significant value to end users.

How can Astar dApps and projects implement these tools?

Pastel has made it easy for builders to implement its technology into their projects with the creation of a detailed builder’s guide. The guide is available on the Astar Community Bulletin Medium page as well as on the Astar Github and developer documentation page, making it easily accessible to anyone who wants to use it. The guide provides all the information needed to use Pastel’s APIs via its Gateway service, which can be easily incorporated into any build.

For NFT related projects, builders can utilize Sense & Cascade within the Astar (PSP34) NFT standard. For those looking for a robust decentralized permanent storage solution, they can call the Cascade Gateway API during the storage process. Note that Pastel’s Gateway service also pins data to IPFS for continued decentralized redundancy. ArtZero, an NFT marketplace built on the Astar ecosystem, is in the process of implementing Sense & Cascade to help enhance the security and value proposition that they provide to their users.

What does this mean? These highly innovative technologies are an API call away. For example, a project has NFT data that it would like to store on Cascade and run through Sense for rareness certification and authentication. Depending on where the project’s builder wants the API requests to occur, Sense and/or Cascade API requests can be executed at any point in the NFT mint function or completely separately from the function itself. From there, the NFT data will be stored permanently and the asset rareness analysis and authentication information will be sent back to the project via an API call within seconds.

Pastel has made it simple for builders to incorporate its technology into their projects, giving them access to advanced blockchain capabilities.

What does this collaboration mean for the Astar ecosystem and the wider Web3/NFT ecosystem as a whole?

The collaboration between Pastel and Astar has significant implications for both the Astar ecosystem and the wider Web3/NFT ecosystem. By incorporating new functionalities into the Astar ecosystem, builders are now able to refine their projects and offer greater value to end-users. The utilization of Sense within the NFT standards will raise the bar for NFT projects and give creators and collectors peace of mind knowing that their artworks are certifiably rare. The Cascade permanent storage solution also provides confidence to all users that the NFTs they own will never be lost or inaccessible. This collaboration is a significant step forward for the wider Web3/NFT ecosystem as a whole, and will drive innovation, growth, and adoption of these cutting-edge technologies.

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/.

The Top Celebrity NFT Owners

Posted on by Pastel Network

With entrepreneurs, rappers, DJs, and professional sports players leading the way, more and more celebrities are joining in the NFT craze than ever.

Some launch their own NFT collections; some collect NFTs from other creators; some directly invest in NFT ventures. Some do all.

This guide will dive into the portfolios of the top celebrity NFT owners who have collected dazzling JPEGs from the most extravagant collections.

Let’s explore: which celebrity has the largest NFT portfolio so far? What projects are most popular? 

To explain, we compiled a celebrity NFT owner list based on DappRadar’s October and November reports.

Gary Vaynerchuk

Entrepreneur Gary Vee has been an NFT ambassador from its early days. Recently, he launched his own Veefriends NFT project that provides the owners three-year access to a multi-day conference called Veecon. Around 74% of his NFT wealth comes from his own collection. He kept 1016 Veefriends NFTs which have approximately $69M in market value.

He’s been collecting NFTs from other collections as well. As of writing, Gary Vee’s NFT portfolio is allegedly worth more than $90M. 

Some attention-grabbing pieces from his portfolio are:

  • 60 CryptoPunks. Cryptopunks is the revolutionary NFT collection launched in 2017 that started the crypto art movement. Cryptopunks collection represents one of the first examples of the non-fungibility concept on Ethereum. The most valuable editions in Vee’s collection are CryptoPunk #2424 and #2140.
  • 7 Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). BAYC is a collection of 10,000 ape NFTs. It’s one of the most exclusive NFT collections. In recent months owning a BAYC NFT has become a status symbol in the crypto world. It serves as a digital identity that provides the owner access to exclusive membership club activities, like the collaborative graffiti board bathroom.
  • Three Meebits. It is another prominent collection by Larva Labs, the studio that made the legendary Cryptopunks.

Snoop Dogg

The famous rapper Snoop Dogg is one of the most influential NFT celebrities. He was an early promoter of Dogecoin; he partnered with the Sandbox Game on new land offerings; he collaborated with Chris Torres to launch the NyanDogg collection.

Last September, he revealed that he is actually the human behind the anonymous Cozomo de’ Medici, a popular NFT collector Twitter account that had launched in August. He said he wanted to separate his NFT business from other activities.

Here are some of the most valuable NFT assets he owns under the pseudonym Cozomo de’ Medici. The entire collection is valued at around $14M.

This is only Cozomo de’ Medici’s collection. We know that Snoop Dogg has also invested in BAYCs. He shared in a tweet that he acquired them through the NFT broker firm Moonpay.

Alexis Ohanian 

Another NFT frontrunner is Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. His NFT collection includes 6 Cryptopunks, 2 BAYCs, 10 Meebits, and many others. The most valuable NFT in the portfolio is Cryptopunk #8115.

Ohanian gifted his wife Serena Williams a look-a-like punk (Cryptopunk #2950). He wore its image as a badge on his collar while visiting the 2021 MET Gala. 

All six punks in Ohanian’s portfolio are black female punks with headbands. The entire Cryptopunks collection has 3,840 female punks.

He also invested in the Cool Cats project with 7 NFTs. Cool Cats is a collection of randomly generated NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. Owners are free to do anything with them under a non-exclusive license.

In addition, Ohanian minted 13 pairs of NFT sneakers and 4 Daypacks from the 10KFT collection. The 10KFT NFT collection allows NFT owners to create customized sneaker designs featuring their NFTs. But only a few exclusive NFT collections are accepted, such as BAYC, Cool Cats, and CrypToadz.

Steve Aoki

The most precious piece of DJ Steve Aoki’ NFT collection is BAYC #118, followed by Cryptopunk #8705. He has 794 NFTs in total. Other notable items from the collections are:

  • Swaggy Sea Lion from Gary Vee’s Veefriends collection.
  • Three M1 Mutant Serum NFTs, which had been airdropped to all BAYC owners. Its market value is around 9ETH.
  • Cool Cat #3350.
  • 5 CloneX NFTs. CloneX is an NFT collection co-created by the famous Japanese contemporary artist Takashi Murakami and RTFKT. RTFKT is a leading brand that delivers next-gen gaming sneakers and collectibles. It’s been acquired by Nike very recently.

Marshmello

Another celebrity who invested in Cryptopunks, BAYC, and Veefriends collections is DJ Marshmello. His portfolio has 120 NFTs with around $1M market value, including 11 NFTs from the Cryptoadz collection by Gremplin.

The most valuable three NFTs from his collection are:

  • Cryptopunk #8274
  • BAYC #4808
  • BAYC #9231

Post Malone

Among the top NFT celebrity owners, musician Post Malone might be the only one who doesn’t have any Cryptopunks. Instead, he has two BAYCs, #9039 and #961, totally valued at more than $532K. He also invested in the Wolf Game, Swampverse, and Sisters collections.  

Jay-Z

Rapper Jay Z owns the Cryptopunk #6095 and one Portrait and one Sneaker from the RTFKT Cryptopunks project. RTFKT Cryptopunks project functions in a similar vein as the 10KFT NFT collection in that it’s only open to punk owners. 10,000 unique sneakers were created via the corresponding punk from the original Cryptopunks project.

Beeple

The artist Beeple is one of the most valuable crypto art creators today. He made the headlines in 2021 after he sold the Everydays: The First 5000 Days collection for $69M in an auction at Christie’s. 

His NFT portfolio, which consists of works other than his own, isn’t modest either. He gave back to the NFT ecosystem by investing more than $400M in various artists on the Rarible platform. Additionally, he’s some pieces from the Veefriends, Cryptocubes, and Meebits collections.

Mark Cuban

Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban also collected a large number of NFT artworks from the Rarible platform. His NFT portfolio is worth around $467M, with BAYC # 1597 and FEWO Crypto Brick being the most precious pieces. The latter is a collaboration between the RTFKT studios and the well-known NFT artist Fewocious.

Other notable celebrity NFT collectors include the NBA star Stephen Curry and the Rapper Ja Rule. The most valuable asset in Curry’s portfolio is the #7990 BAYC. Ja Rule has the #3512 from the Mutant Ape Yacht Club collection.

Final Thoughts: Celebrities Are Loving NFTs

The influx of multifaceted musicians, entrepreneurs, artists, and professional sports players into the NFT space has been welcomed by open arms by all NFT holders. 

Many NFT-holding celebrities tend to acquire pieces from iconic NFT collections such as the BAYC, Cool Cats, and Crypto Punks, but we’re also seeing many celebrities invest in individual artists’ works. In recent months, owning a BAYC or Punk evolved from being something that just crypto people collected to a status symbol for celebrities and athletes. 

We’re eager to follow the celebrity movement into NFTs and explore what’s next on the horizon. 

Nyan Cat Crypto Art Sells for 300 ETH ($580,000)

Posted on by Pastel Network

Nyan Cat, an animated flying cat with a poptart body leaving a rainbow trail behind it, recently sold for $580,000. 

Welcome to 2021, the first year where an opening sentence like the one above actually makes sense.  While you may not remember Nyan Cat, by its name, you’ll probably remember it as the slice of Internet history it is from its visual:

“Ohh, that thing!”

Yes. Nyan Cat selling for nearly $600,000 may come as a surprise to most, but those following the rapidly-growing market for digital art and collectibles may even consider the selling price a steal. 

Nyan Cat History

Chris Torres created Nyan Cat about ten years ago; the original video on YouTube has a publish date of April 11th, 2011. The YouTube video has since grown to over 185 million views, and the cat has been shared, re-shared, modified, and re-modified in an endless meme-ification across multiple mediums. 

According to Social Blade, the Nyan Cat video could have generated anywhere between $4545 to $72,720 per year for Torres, simply based on the number of views and a wide CPM range. It’s worth noting that this range has no direct relation to the ultimate sale price, but it’s worth including to help bridge the concept of digital art and making money on the Internet.

Rough estimates of the Nyan Cat ad revenue from YouTube

The Nyan Cat Crypto Art Sale

In February 2021, Torres listed a one-of-a-kind version of Nyan Cat for sale on Foundation, a marketplace for digital collectibles and other goods. 

The artwork was initially listed at a modest 3 ETH (a little over $5,000) on February 18th, 2021. The bidding escalated the price to 85 ETH in the first 24-hours. The final 30-minutes of the auction on February 19th was a bidding war between users @zonted, @blackpoolHQ, and an anonymous address, 0x7Eb28B2f14A59789ec4c782A5DD957F9C8F33f6b. 

Nyan cat auction in its heated last moments.

Nyan Cat ultimately sold for 300 ETH, which was valued at roughly $580,000 at the time of the sale to the user solely identified by an address. 

What Nyan Cat Means for the Internet

The sale of Nyan Cat was a momentous occasion that linked early Internet culture with the nascent blockchain-based economy of today, particularly with the NFT movement. 

As a nonfungible token-based digital asset, the Nyan Cat that sold on Foundation is guaranteed to be an authentic copy of that particular piece of art– a 1/1 NFT of Nyan Cat. It doesn’t mean the new owner owns the copyright, trademark, sole ownership, or a claim to the YouTube advertising revenue– it’s simply blockchain-verified bragging rights of that specific NFT. 

For collectors, the Nyan Cat sale is a data point that makes a very strong argument for the value of a solely digital asset. In theory, if you’re into early Internet culture, such as icanhazcheezburger.com, Salad Fingers, and Happy Tree Friends, then the auction of Nyan Cat is likely an eye-opening moment that owning part of your favorite Internet moments is a possibility. 

However, arguably more valuable is the ability for creators to directly monetize their creativity and cut out the middlemen. 

For example, rather than relying on a centralized platform like YouTube for ad revenue, a creator such as Torres can auction off their creation directly to his or her fans. 

“But, how is this NFT valuable at all? Can’t I just copy the video or image to my downloads?” 

Sure, there is nothing stopping you from downloading an image or video of Nyan Cat, but there’s also nothing stopping you from buying a replica or poster of the Mona Lisa from Amazon. You wouldn’t “own” the Mona Lisa– you’d own a replica of it, which is significantly less valuable than the original. 

Similarly, the copied photo or video of an NFT is worth much less (i.e., worthless) than the original. The 300 ETH paid for the Nyan Cat NFT is simply for “ownership” of that NFT, and that asset can be stored and traded as such. 

Final Thoughts: What Nyan Cat’s 300 ETH (~$580,000) Sale Means for You

If this article and the Nyan Cat sale is your first exposure to NFTs, you may find yourself at a somewhat confusing crossroads. 

In the grand scheme of things, there are few instances where a digital asset has been sold for anything substantial, and there just isn’t enough time duration to estimate how well they store value.

However, paying seemingly exorbitant amounts of money for things with dubious “brass tacks” value beyond a market-determined price is something human beings have been doing for centuries. For example, in January 2021, a box of unopened Pokemon cards sold for $408,000. 

NFTs can be viewed as a progression of collecting into the digital realm. Nyan Cat joins some of the top-selling NFTs of 2021, and at the current rate of NFT sales, it’s unsure how long it will be able to hang onto its “Top Sale” crown. 

For instance, digital artist Beeple sold an NFT titled “The First 5000 Days” for a record-breaking $69,346,250 just weeks after the Nyan Cat sale. The buyer was an anonymous Singapore cryptocurrency whale going under the name Metakovan.

NFTs are getting a ton of attention right now and are certainly worth monitoring, but should be considered very risky investments. 

NBA Top Shot: A Complete Guide to Basketball on Blockchain

Posted on by Pastel Network

NBA Top Shot is the hottest talk on the cryptocurrency of 2021 so far; the collectible, blockchain-based NFT release platform and marketplace enable users to purchase NFTs of NBA highlight reels, and some of them have sold for over $200,000.

It seems like basketball on the blockchain is a slam dunk. Let’s explore. 

NBA Top Shot History: A Dapper Labs Project

NBA Top Shot was launched in July 2019 by Dapper Labs, a blockchain startup specializing in digital collectibles.

Prior to Top Shot, Dapper Labs’ best-known project was the viral CryptoKitties– a staple of 2017 cryptocurrency culture. CryptoKitties is an NFT-based game where users can collect and “breed” collectible cats. 

NBA Top Shot’s Home Page

While NBA Top Shot and Cryptokitties share many similarities due to their non-fungible nature, CryptoKitties is unique in that each CryptoKitty is one-of-a-kind in its design. In contrast, NBA Top Shot sells thousands of copies of an individual moment, although each is marked by a unique-serial number. 

CryptoKitties were frequently being bought and sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars during the 2017/2018 bull run in secondary marketplaces. 

The Dapper Labs partnership team has been incredibly busy since CryptoKitties, forming partnerships with the NBA and NBPA, Warner Music Group, Ubisoft, and the UFC. 

“Dapper Labs’ innovation and expertise make them a perfect partner to introduce this groundbreaking game and what we believe will become coveted digital collectibles for basketball fans around the world,” said Adrienne O’Keeffe, NBA Senior Director, Consumer Products & Gaming Partnerships in a press release regarding the 2019 NBA partnership. 

Dapper Labs raised $52.5M from notable funds such as Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, Venrock, GV (formally known as Google Ventures), and Samsung as well as the founders of AngelList, Reddit, Dreamworks, Coinbase, and  Zynga. The team recently announced it is raising $250 million in a Coatue Management-led round in 2021. 

Contrary to popular belief, Dapper Labs doesn’t use the Ethereum blockchain; it uses the Flow blockchain, citing Ethereum’s inability to cost-effectively scale as too significant an obstacle for the trading of digital collectibles. With Ethereum gas fees spiking as high as $150+, Dapper seems to have made a great decision before reaching a critical mass of users and virality.  

How Does NBA Top Shot Work?

NBA Top Shot is designed to emulate the exciting experience of buying packs of trading cards. 

  1. You can create an account at https://www.nbatopshot.com/. 
  2. You will be required to fill out some basic KYC profile information. You will also be asked to make a Dapper Labs profile, which facilitates the transaction process. 
  3. You will be given the option to select your favorite teams, which will help NBA Top Shot curate your home-page experience. 

Once you’ve created your account, you’ll likely need to wait for a new pack to drop. We recommend signing up for their email list to be notified as to when the packs will go live. 

They sell out very quickly, and showing up on time doesn’t guarantee you’ll get to purchase a pack. 

So far, it seems there are three standard types of pack available:

  • Base Set (Common): For $9, you will get nine common moments. Every moment has a production of 1000+ with no maximum cap. 
  • Premium: For $24, users will receive seven common moments, and one rare moment. The rare moments have a production max of 999 clips. 
  • Legendary: $230 gets you six common moments, three rare moments, and one legendary moment. The legendary moment has a production max of 99 clips. 

There are also pack drops outside of the standard pricing. For example, on March 6th, 2021, “Seeing Stars” packs dropped for $14. 

How Much are NBA Top Shot Moments Selling For?

Taking a gander at the NBA Top Shot Marketplace, you’ll see thousands of Moments being sold for anywhere from $5 to $250,000+. 

One user made waves by purchasing a LeBron James Lakers Highlight Moment for $208,000, citing that he is an enormous fan of James and believes the moment is worth $1,000,000+. 

Sold out packs on NBA Top Shot

There are over 8 NFT moments of James that sold between $48,500 to $100,000. Zion Williamson’s “Holo MMXX” Block Moment sold for $100,000. 

Final Thoughts

Are NBA Top Shot moments worth hundreds of thousands, or potentially millions, of dollars? Is it just a fad that will fizzle out once the hype dies down? 

We’ll let history decide, but for now, it’s worth exploring two antagonizing lines of thought:

  • “NBA Top Shot moments are pieces of sports history! You’ve seen trading cards sell for millions of dollars, this is just like that but maybe even better. Since these moments are NFTs, you can easily track ownership, propriety, and you can transact seamlessly with anyone all over the world. They’re digital, so you don’t have to worry about storing them or experiencing a situation like your mom throwing out your lucrative Pokemon card collection!” 

Well, yes. One can argue that value is determined by how much anyone is willing to pay for a specific item. It is difficult to gauge how well value is preserved in a purely digital ecosystem because it is so new. Speculating with NFTs is very risky, and every ounce of prudence may help in the long-run. 

  • “People are crazy to spend any amount of money on NBA Top Shot Moments. You can just save the video to your computer and watch the moment whenever you want, for free! The marketplace is highly speculative and the true value of NBA Top Shot Moments is probably much less than what people are trying to sell them for.” 

Well, yes. You can also buy a mock imitation of the Mona Lisa for about $100. Heck, the paint on it probably won’t even be chipping. The value of NBA Top Shot Moments and NFTs is in their scarcity and ownership features

In theory, more people watching and saving a particular moment will only increase the value of owning the original– it’s basically free advertising. 

Time will tell how far basketball on the blockchain will go, but it’s worth paying attention to for any sports fan or collector.

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