NBA Top Shot is a nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace that enables basketball fans to buy, sell and trade NBA-themed digital collectibles.
These collectibles are “Moments” — NFTs of NBA video clips and digital art — available per their degree of rarity. In other words, users can trade NFTs that feature anything from a winning three-pointe from Luka Dončić to a dunk from Lebron James, depending on their availability.
A NBA Top Shot Moment listing example. Source: Official Website
The concept is akin to traditional sports collectible where fans attempt to acquire the rarest of items associated with teams, with an aim to either collect or sell it later at a higher price. Except, in the case of NFTs, these collectibles are digital — unique cryptographic tokens that exist on a blockchain and theoretically cannot be replicated.
How does NBA Top Shot work?
NBA Top Shot is officially licensed by the NBA, the NBA Players Association, and Dapper Labs. The marketplace runs on the FLOW blockchain, which Dapper Labs built as a developer-friendly ledger to support “the next generation of games, apps, and digital assets.”
As explained above, the NBA Top Shot platform functions like trading cards. It starts with the NBA licensing its reels and digital art to Dapper Labs. In turn, Dapper Labs uses the footage to create Moments as NFTs.
Each Moment has a unique serial number attached to it, which guarantees its authenticity and shows its rarity. In addition, the Dapper Labs team creates only a limited number of NFTs to ensure scarcity. As a result, the commonly available Moments are cheaper in valuation than the rarer ones. The NBA Top Shot website explains that:
An NFT is a one-of-a-kind, non-fungible, cryptographic token representing a unique digital asset for which there is no copy or substitute. An NFT cannot be substituted for another NFT as each NFT is distinctive and unique in some way. An NFT is not a medium of exchange and is not convertible virtual currency.Each moment is secured by the blockchain, meaning your…..
