What I’ve Been up To: An Exciting Announcement
Introducing Swish Dreams
You’ve subscribed to this newsletter, and it’s likely because we share similar interests: NFTs, basketball, data, and storytelling. While I took a brief hiatus from the weekly newsletters, I didn’t quite kick my feet up and relax - quite the opposite, actually. I’ve been hard at work behind the scenes, and as my earliest supporters, I’m incredibly excited to share with you all what I’ve been working on. It’s called Swish Dreams, and let me tell you a bit more.
A Quick Backstory
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the combination of sports, data, and storytelling. Looking back on it, it’s obvious why I used to sit down with a baseball scorebook and jot down every play that happened in my beloved Giants games. I loved reading these scorebooks, finding interesting tidbits of data, and reliving each game’s story, play by play. These scorebooks allowed me to connect with the sport I loved in a personal, magical way, and left me with a unique keepsake to create from each game.
I recently found myself reminiscing over the time Klay Thompson scored 37 points in a single quarter. I watched the highlights on YouTube, listened to stories from other players on the court, and perused the game’s box score, yet I couldn’t find a singular image that told the story of that magical third quarter and what it was like to see. It was a shooting performance that may arguably never be topped during my lifetime, and I couldn’t find anything that succinctly told its story - we can surely do better than that.
That’s when it all clicked: What if I combined my passion for sports, data visualization, storytelling, and NFTs to create unique pieces of art that tell the story of our favorite players’ performances in the basketball games we watch each and every night?
I knew I couldn’t tackle this project alone, so I teamed up with two of the sharpest minds in the space:
Greg Murray, former professional basketball player and currently most well-known for his NFT analytics and data visualization skills.
Sara, programmer and smart contract connoisseur with an expertise in all things NFTs and blockchain.
We’ve been in the lab for a few months now working on Swish Dreams, and we’re so excited to share with you what we’ve put together. Let’s dive into the details.
What are Swish Dreams?
Swish Dreams are a collection of 9,758 dynamically generated shot chart NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. Each Swish Dream represents an in-game performance from one of the world’s 43 best basketball players during the 2021-2022 season.
How are Swish Dreams Generated?
Each Swish Dream depicts a single game shooting performance for a player.
Each circle represents a made shot.
The color of the circle represents the relative “heat” of the player.
The size of the circle represents when the shot was made in game.
For our Veteran players there are 3 tokens for each game based on the following rules for each player + game combination:
1 will be plotted on a “base” court
2 will be plotted on specialty courts, selected at random
For our five Rookies there is 1 token for each game, based on the following rule:
50% chance of being plotted on the home team’s base court
50% chance of being plotted on one of the team’s specialty courts
Below is an example of the 3 tokens generated for a Veteran player’s game:
Which players will have Swish Dreams?
Every team has one Veteran player, a handful have two Veteran players, and five teams also have a Rookie. Here’s the full player list:
How will the minting process work?
There will be two periods to mint your Swish Dreams: during the Access List minting, as well as during the Public minting.
Starting today you can add yourself to the Access List for a small gas fee on our mint page while spots remain. Here are some other important dates:
Monday, 12/6: Access List minting begins, and closes on Thursday, 12/9
Friday, 12/10: Public minting begins
Each Swish Dream costs .04 Ξ (Ethereum) + gas to mint. With each mint you’ll receive a randomly selected token, and the details will be revealed on 12/7, or 48 hours after Swish Dreams sell out - whichever comes first. Your Swish Dream may be for a game that has already occurred, giving you the final artwork and statistics, or it may be for a future game. For future games, the token’s metadata and artwork will be updated within 24 hours of the game’s conclusion.
Injuries, trades, and load management are real factors in today’s basketball. If any of these happen, leading to a player not playing in a game, the court(s) will remain empty and the token will feature a DNP icon in the upper-right corner. We plan to add additional utility to DNP tokens in the form of advantages in future giveaways, airdrops, and raffles.
We’re so excited to bring this project to life, and we can’t wait to share this experience with you. Want to get involved? Here are some quick links:
To learn more about Swish Dreams, head to our website at www.swishdreamsnft.com
Want to join the Access List for priority minting? Head to our mint page
To join the community, hop into our Discord
To stay up to date on announcements and giveaways, follow the Swish Dreams Twitter account
I can’t thank you all enough for encouraging me to dive deeper into NFTs in 2021. It’s been a fantastic year that I’ll never forget, and thanks to you I’ve been able to bring a project I’m so passionate about to life, and share it with the world.
~ Taylor