3 Ideas to Spice Up Top Shot
Something to put a little razzle to your dazzle
Remember playing Tic-tac-toe as a kid? What starts as a fun, creative game with a friend eventually diverges into a series of predictable moves that always end in a tie unless someone sleeping at the wheel. For a portion of collectors, myself included, this feels similar to their experience with Top Shot. The edges and inefficiencies I enjoyed exploring as a collector in January have tightened up. While the long-lasting bear market can’t be ignored, I’ve found that my activity on Top Shot has both slowed down and simplified. Like many collectors, I find myself:
Queueing up for pack drops to see if I can score a pack and - hopefully - pull a nice Moment
Occasionally completing Challenges in hope of landing a favorable Serial Number to offset my losses
While Top Shot can be categorized as a collectible, it can also be fairly described as a game. In my mind, what often separates wildly popular games from mediocre ones is strategic variety. Take Settlers of Catan as an example: while you might be figuring out a way to take a stronghold of all Lumber resources, I’m perfectly happy pursuing building a road longer than Giannis’ free throw routine. I strongly believe Top Shot runs the risk of boring collectors when the vast majority are all acting in unison with the same strategy. So how do we fix this? Introduce new concepts that lead to a more dynamic ecosystem with multiple strategies at play. Sound fun? Let’s dive into how we might do that.
#1: Burning Challenge Moments
What made Challenges really interesting in the early days of Top Shot? Most collectors had no idea how many Reward Moments would be minted. Challenges today have become very transparent for a handful of reasons. First and foremost, there are a variety of tools that allow you to anticipate how many collectors will be completing the Challenge - the first step in getting a sense for the Reward’s likely value. Secondly, players now have many Moments on Top Shot, painting a clearer picture of their general value on the platform. Combine these two trends, and you’re left with a dynamic where it’s fairly straightforward to determine if completing a Challenge is profitable or not once you factor in the required Moments nose-diving in value.
How can we create an environment where a Challenge’s required Moments might retain more value, and the number of minted Rewards remains an exciting unknown? Require burning Moments in order to receive the Challenge Reward. Here’s how it could work:
When the Challenge timer strikes zero, all collectors with the required Moments in their account have 24 hours to make a decision: Burn the required Moments and receive the Challenge Reward, or alternatively pass on the option, keep the Challenge Moments in your account, or sell them on the marketplace.
First and foremost, this makes the dynamics of Challenges more interesting. Collectors now have a variety of options to explore, and they can certainly be rewarded if they’re right. Since the required Challenge Moments are burned and gone forever, receiving the Challenge Reward comes at a steep premium. The Reward has to garner a hefty price tag in order to offset the losses in losing the required Challenge Moments.
Secondly, as required Challenge Moments are burned, they become more scarce. This added scarcity - in theory - increases each Moment’s individual value, helping reduce the post-Challenge depreciation.
Let’s run this scenario through the Ja Morant Hustle and Show Challenge. To set the stage, this Challenge required eight Hustle and Show Moments, each with a circulation count of 18,000 and setting collectors back about $190. Just over 6.5k Reward Moments were minted, and with an initial value of $70, we can calculate a market cap of $457k. At that mint size, the Reward certainly wouldn’t offset the $190 loss, but what if fewer collectors completed the Challenge?
Here we can see how the number of Challenge completions impacts the per-Moment price if we assume a constant market cap, which seems relatively fair. Based on this data, roughly 2,500 or fewer collectors would have had to burn their Challenge Moments to earn a Ja Morant Hustle & Show Moment worth their efforts. How many would burn their Moments in exchange for a Ja? That’s the fun part of it.
#2: Top Shot Buyback Program
Growing up, I remember being able to sell my baseball cards back to my local sports cards shop in exchange for cash. The store would then re-package traded-in cards into mystery packs and sell them for $10. I loved both sides of this exchange - getting some value back for cards I didn’t want, and opening a mystery pack that occasionally landed me an awesome card that went straight into a sleeve (I was that kid). While it would require some serious work, I think Top Shot is in a fantastic position to create a similar system that would create for a fascinating dynamic. Hear me out:
With all of the transaction data at its finger tips, Top Shot could create an algorithm for valuing each and every Moment, down to the serial number. Just like the card shop down the street, these Moments could be randomly inserted into Packs that are available for purchase. How might this impact the ecosystem?
First, collectors have a reliable method for becoming liquid very quickly, albeit at a likely below-market rate. Secondly, it helps establish floor prices for each Moment on the platform. If I know that Top Shot is willing to give me $75 for my LeBron James Playoff dunk, why would I undercut the lowest ask on the marketplace and list for $70? Lastly, it adds a very intriguing element of surprise to the re-packaged mystery packs. While you are likely to pull some mediocre Moments from the pack, perhaps you strike gold and pull a Legendary Moment that was traded-in by a collector who needed to quickly become liquid and go after another Moment.
Now this certainly isn’t a simple project for Top Shot to take on. Developing a robust algorithm to handle pricing each and every Moment would be a daunting task, and starts to shift the market away from being a true free market. Secondly, there are legal hurdles when it comes to these “loot box” style packs, as it starts to toe the line of full-blown gambling. Hey, I’m not a Product Manager at Top Shot, I’m just an idea guy.
#3: Leasing Moments
Last on the podium of ideas that are easy to spit-ball and are challenging to implement is the concept of leasing Moments. Here and there, Top Shot collectors lease out their Moments to friends so that they can complete a Challenge or qualify for a drop, but what if there was a more formalized process around leasing Moments? Sure you may joke with your friend that he’s going to take your Moments and disappear, living off the grid in Mexico, but it highlights a genuine challenge: collectors have a very limited number of people that they can lease Moments to. How might this be better?
Top Shot could establish a system by which collectors could put their Moments “up for lease” as opposed to up for sale. Each collector can set the terms of their lease, setting both the price and duration. Leased Moments can be used for high-utility purposes such as complete Challenges (yes, this wouldn’t work in the world of Burning Moments for Challenges) and qualifying for exclusive pack drops. Holding onto a Series 1 Legendary Moment and want to extract some value from it? Put it up for lease before the next Legendary pack drop!
Also consider the ability to lease Moments and compete in DFS-style games such as Moment Rank’s Daily Contest. No longer do collectors have to purchase Moments in order to craft their winning teams - instead, they can strategically lease the Moments they want for a fraction of the cost. Sign me up.
And lastly, as NFTs continue to become more mainstream, and it’s more common to see a physical NFT display in someone’s home, we may live in a future where it’s simply cool to rent a high-profile Moment. While I might just be a Top Shot nerd, seeing a LeBron James cosmic in my account or on my wall - even for a day - would certainly get the juices flowing.
That’s all for this week! Want to support the newsletter? You can help with the late nights and early mornings by buying me a coffee.
And special shoutout to all of the readers who generously donated coffees last week! Y’all are far too kind, and I appreciate all of your support 🙏
Disclaimer: None of the above constitutes professional and/or financial advice. All opinions expressed on Minted Moment are from the personal research and experience of the author, and are intended for educational purposes only.
Love the ideas.