【Chain News Highlights】Disrupting the century-old trading card market! NBA Top Shot based on the gaming blockchain Flow is gaining popularity.

This article is authorized to be reprinted by ChainNews, with the original title ""Subverting the Century-old Star Card Market? Why NBA Top Shot?"

With a daily turnover exceeding 2.1 million US dollars, NBA Top Shot, a suddenly popular NFT collectible game, has climbed to the second place on the chain's gaming turnover chart after half a year of testing. Its goal is to surpass CryptoKitties, the legend of chain games, or perhaps traditional physical star cards?

"Watching basketball, not collecting star cards, can this thing also be collected? Quite interesting..."

After hearing similar answers from several basketball buddies around me, it seems that I have figured out the reason why NBA Top Shot suddenly became popular - because it's quite interesting.

The NFT collectible game called NBA Top Shot suddenly became popular in 2021, with several days of turnover exceeding one million US dollars. In the past 24 hours, it achieved a remarkable turnover of over 2.1 million US dollars, rapidly rising to second place on the chain's gaming turnover chart, showing signs of quickly surpassing the legendary CryptoKitties in the chain gaming market.

What magic does this game, NBA Top Shot, which has only been in public testing for half a year, possess? It can rise in the field of chain games, which was not highly regarded by the market. Perhaps we need to find the answer from the existing century-old history of star card collections.

How to Play NBA Top Shot?

After completing the registration, the website will automatically pop up a two-minute introductory video, showcasing the contents of the NBA Top Shot star cards and how to trade them.

For users accustomed to online shopping, there is no threshold for NBA Top Shot. By clicking on the Packs option at the top of the official website, you can purchase the card packs officially on sale. You cannot know in advance what cards may be opened when purchasing a pack. The official provides some limited descriptions for different types of card packs. If you want to open some rare cards, you need to carefully read the description of the card pack. Due to the recent high market demand, at the time of writing, the official card packs are temporarily sold out, and you need to wait for the official "restock."

Clicking on the MarketPlace will allow you to enter the circulation market of star cards, where you can directly buy and sell specific cards. In addition to the dynamic presentation of exciting moments, each exciting moment star card comes with detailed information, including the game where the exciting moment occurred, the statistical data of the "protagonist" star card in that game, the scores and results of the four quarters of the game, and the average season data of the "protagonist" star card in that game.

The product list also supports search and category filtering functions, allowing you to directly filter your favorite players or interesting moments lists based on the teams you support. Since these exciting moment star cards are limited edition, teams with more fans like the Lakers and popular players like LeBron James and Luka Dončić generally have higher prices for their exciting moment cards.

Currently, NBA Top Shot supports credit card payments or payments through cryptocurrencies. Directly using a credit card for payment requires an additional percentage of fees, while purchasing cards through cryptocurrency does not incur additional fees. The cryptocurrencies currently supported include BTC, BCH, DAI, ETH, and USDC, totaling five kinds.

After completing the payment, you will receive the purchased star cards, which can be priced and resold. The market price of the card is affected by its rarity, number, and the market popularity of the corresponding player. Selling a card requires a 5% fee, and the funds received after the sale will be automatically credited to your game balance, which can be used to purchase other card packs or cards. The future balance will also open up the withdrawal function.

How Popular is NBA Top Shot?

Data released by CryptoSlam shows that NBA Top Shot's popularity currently surpasses all other online games. In the past 24 hours, the game's trading volume exceeded $2.1 million, which is nearly 46 times that of the second-ranked Sorare and far higher than the combined daily transaction volume of games ranked 2-30. Additionally, in the past 24 hours, the active user count on NBA Top Shot reached 3,699, ten times that of the second-ranked Sorare. Based on the total number of transactions in the past 24 hours, on average, over 33 star cards are sold on NBA Top Shot every minute.

Although the project's public testing has only been half a year, NBA Top Shot has already climbed to second place in the total online game trading volume list, second only to CryptoKitties. Currently, 6,160 users have purchased "digital star cards," six times the number of users for CryptoPunks. While NBA Top Shot's transaction volume currently lags behind the former leader CryptoKitties by approximately $20 million, if NBA Top Shot can maintain its recent popularity, this seemingly huge gap could be closed in the coming weeks. Perhaps, after a month, the "top seller" of online games will officially change hands. It is worth mentioning that CryptoKitties' launch dates back to 2017.

So far, the highest price for a single star card sold on NBA Top Shot has reached $47,500. This card features a spectacular moment where Lakers forward LeBron James executed a fast-break dunk against the Rockets on February 7, 2020. This transaction record also surpasses the $35,000 record price set by a spectacular moment created by Grizzlies guard Ja Morant dunking over Baynes.

A data statistics website dedicated to NBA Top Shot has completely crashed due to the recent surge in popularity, with the site operators commenting that they are considering how to address the traffic issues.

What is the Potential of NBA Top Shot?

The reason why physical star cards have remained popular for over a hundred years, gaining recognition from more people, and attracting more participants, is not just because star cards can be regarded as a collectible associated with sports hobbies. The satisfaction brought by the significant appreciation of these cards in certain situations and the obvious speculative value from a market perspective give these products an alternative asset identity. The substantial user base of basketball sports provides an ideal liquidity foundation for this seemingly niche hobby, spurring a billion-dollar market. The "digital star cards" launched by NBA Top Shot possess the same potential.

Take Lakers star LeBron James as an example. At the time of writing, James' Twitter account has over 48 million followers, even surpassing Tesla's active founder Elon Musk by over 6 million. This quantity shows that sports superstars are also "top influencers" in social media. Just as the late Kobe Bryant was jokingly referred to by Chinese fans as having "6 billion followers" (representing the global population of 6 billion), the basketball culture represented by the NBA has a considerable influence worldwide.

Even if only one percent or even one-thousandth of James' fans are willing to try to purchase star cards, that would still represent over 48,000 users, exceeding the current user count of NBA Top Shot, which is only one-tenth of this number. With the new generation of NBA players becoming increasingly active on social media and voicing their opinions online, the distance between fans and players has significantly shortened. Players like Heat's rising star Tyler Herro, who has shined in the early stages of his career, frequently interact with NBA Top Shot on Twitter, greatly contributing to the rapid rise in NBA Top Shot's popularity.

Unlike physical star cards that have high requirements for storage, grading, and other aspects, the almost zero storage cost of NFT star cards significantly lowers the threshold for this type of collection. The enhanced liquidity of online assets also provides star card collections with more ideal investment attributes. Once people gradually begin to understand and accept the collectible value of NFT assets, NBA Top Shot could open up a market that may exceed the billion-dollar scale already created by physical star cards.