May The Pack Luck Be With You ⭐️

Good Morning, NFT Jedis! Hope you’ve had a great week, and a fun May 4!

Programming Note — I’ll be out in the desert (AZ) this weekend for my bachelor party, so LG will be making a guest appearance for the Saturday newsletter!

My wife and I got engaged in 2018, and were supposed to have our wedding in 2020 —  until COVID crashed the party. We got legally married in our backyard during lockdown, but will finally be having our actual wedding this summer! Wedding planning during COVID — do not recommend.

Let’s get into all the action from the last few days:

We’ve got two rounds of Playoff pack drops today, with a normal queue ($19, 3 PM PST) and Trade Ticket queue (10 Tickets, 5 PM PST).

Full list of moments available here. Some interesting omissions (notably no Kevin Durant, Luka Doncic, Steph Curry or Klay Thompson) — but I appreciate the curation and focusing on the best moments that tell the story from the first round.

We also finally get the moment Top Shot is truly missing right now — a Grand Theft Alvarado steal:

If you’re unfamiliar, here’s a fun compilation of Jose’s sneaky steals throughout the year. I hope Zion Williamson can come back healthy next season, because the Pellies have a pretty exciting core!

Each of the playoff moments will be minted to 8,750, with 45,000 total packs available. While that mint count seems like a nice improvement, I’m not sure it really moves the needle in terms of value on the marketplace.

New moments will continue to compete and cannibalize their older counterparts, regardless of mint size — a problem that all sports NFT platforms are currently reckoning with. And while mechanisms like tickets remove supply, it might be a while before the tide can truly turn.

Burn them all!

Your weekly market update, via @steefcrypto:

The news hasn’t changed much in a while, but Steef’s third bullet there is worth highlighting.

The past few weeks we have seen several community members bring to light a problem that we haven’t heard much about since the early days of Top Shot, but is clearly still a rampant issue — multi-accounting. The WNBA starter packs in particular seem to be problem right now:

Honestly, it’s extremely frustrating to see this stuff still going on — in ways that seem like they should be setting off more alarm bells INTERNALLY than having the community continually dig up the info for them. Top Shot posted this tweet last week, but per @NYKnickGuy and the reddit thread above, clearly the measures aren’t enough:

I’d also be curious to know how these ‘new users’ factor in to growth metrics — are the same fraudulent rings accounting for most of the fresh accounts we see?

Dapper compliance:

Flash Challenge: It’s Gonna Be Me

🎧 The “Best” NFT Projects

🎧 From WoW Raids to Rumble Kongs (Feat. Marcus Blasche)

🎧 Will Sports NFTs Survive?

Thanks for reading! — Zach @ The First Mint

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Follow The First Mint on Twitter at @TheFirstMint.

Follow Zach on Twitter at @GhostOfGregOden.