A Roller Coaster Week In Top Shot 🎢

Good Morning, NFT People! Hope you’ve had an excellent week!

We’ve had a whirlwind of announcements on Top Shot and the broader FLOW ecosystem this week — so buckle up, keep all hands and feet inside the Newsletter at all times, and let’s get into all the action from the last few days:

It’s a polarizing time in Dapper-land, with Top Shot Score reactions clashing with some milestones and teasers on the platform.

On one hand, you have celebratory tweets and giveaways across the ecosystem, with Top Shot surpassing a BILLION dollars in marketplace sales.

We also saw a curious announcement from Dapper regarding a potential $FLOW airdrop:

However, on the actual platform, the community has now had a few days for people to digest the Top Shot Score changes — and the fallout for those who crafted their collection under the old system is starting to fully be realized.

With valuable moments getting a serious boost under the new TSS, the previous ‘stacking’ meta for Collector Score took a big hit, with that change being felt severely on the current team leaderboards:

While there hadn’t been a ton of utility fleshed out previously for the Top leaderboard holders, Top Shot announced the latest All-Access Experience for the Western Conference Finals — with winners being chosen from the Mavericks TSS leaderboard. This week’s changes made that selection especially rough for those who dropped down in score:

A look at the Series 2 base set price action over the last week, via OTM:

With price factoring heavily into the new scoring methodology, it’s also fair to wonder how to compete on the leaderboards as a smaller account. While not an ideal situation, under Collector Score users were able to grind low-cost moments to move up the leaderboard.

In determining fandom, is who has the most money a positive indicator?

If you want a great deep dive on TSS and future implications:

Speaking of high spenders… Dapper quietly rolled out a purchase match promotion to members of the Top Shot VIP Program (qualifying guidelines here). Details:

While this likely feels like another slap in the face to prominent S2 collectors and non-whales in the heat of the moment, incentivizing whales and high-spenders to buy is a good thing for everyone. The slow drip reward structure also encourages holding — and hopefully this is just a test run for a similar promo with the general population.

That being said, quietly rolling out this promo and then posting about big purchases seems a bit disingenuous:

This falls under the same vibes as creating a Flash Challenge with a specific bottleneck, and then tweeting about how the market is on fire for that moment. Of course it is!

We’ve got several drops coming up, starting TODAY with the Round 2 Playoff Packs at 1 PM PST:

The next S1 Reserve drop is live on Wednesday, with the price staying consistent at 350 Trade Tickets.

Finally, the first WNBA drops of the year are coming soon, throwing it back to 2008 with Run It Back and Archive packs next Friday.

🎥 The Live Show Returns!

The First Mint live show returns in epic fashion. Join us as we discuss the Top Shot Score announcement, the NFT industry, and have some fun with the ‘Who Said It’ game. On today’s show, we’ll be joined by Corey from Martian Premier League, Quad, and Corporate Trash!

🎧 Trust In Crypto

🎧 How NFTs Grow From Here

🎧 The “Best” NFT Projects

Thanks for reading! — Zach @ The First Mint

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