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This newsletter will be your weekly dose of NBA Top Shot news and updates. It will also include updates on what we at Here For The Moments are working on.
What’s going on everyone, it’s Steve and this is the fourth “Here For The Moments Report”.
Roham’s Fireside Chat
CEO of Dapper Labs/Top Shot Roham Gharegozlou recently dropped some knowledge and answered some questions about the current state of and the future or Top Shot on Discord.
Top Shot community all-star Dumbo (@ElDumboTS) kept a record of all the questions answered and typed them all up. It's organized in seven different sections, I'm going to post the pictures down below and break them down from there.
General Overview
They want to have transparency with what they're building, they don't want to release a product and you had no idea it was in the works. Roham says they are “barely scratching the surface” of the platform’s immersion loop. The plan is to reward long-term collectors while also having the platform accessible for new users. Collector Score is a great tool for them to track the different levels of collector.
In regards to the market, Roham says they are not trying to move the market one way or another with the availability of packs. The more users on the site, the better. Packs may come and go but it's all about finding the perfect balance of supply and demand. The circulating supply was increased from 35,000 to 40,000 for a lot of moments to meet expected demand, so the team must have some data showing that the demand is there.
Packs and Moments
Reservation packs as we know them are not the final product,there will be reworks and updates and trials. It takes time and effort for products to change, change will come in time. The editorial team is working on being more transparent with what plays become Moments, says they have mistepped in the past. A content release roadmap is coming and that should give us a better idea of how often packs are released and which packs are released when. Maybe this will stop people from asking when packs are coming every five seconds.
They are being tight lipped about future utility, but it's something they're working on that will come in time. Once the digital experience is working as intended, the utility will follow.
Challenges
Changes are coming to challenges, one of these changes might include utility for holding. The team has data on everything, from money spent to how long you have held your moments. All this data influences the future of Top Shot, and the Top Shot we know now is not the Top Shot we will see in four months. “Burning”moments after a challenge might be a thing in the future but instead of a “burn” it would be more like a “lock” where you couldn't use that Moment anymore but you still own it.
Marketing
There are more marketing tests coming, you will probably begin to see more frequent ads on social media. The $50 in Dapper Balance promotion is a tool to bring in new users and giving them a nice chunk of change to start building their collections.
Communications
It may take time but consistent communication and transparency is something that the team values highly. There was just a new head of comms and director of comms, they both started last week so it might take a while to get into a groove. Their focus is on new user experience now, the site has been stable and they have withdrawals at a point they are happy with.
Bots
Right now, not accounts are effectively frozen. The compliance team has it on their list of things to implement policies and procedures around. There may be lots of users that use a form of automated software but still need to manually pushed buttons, this may workaround the bot detection without them being flagged.
Miscellaneous
The Top Shot team's relationship with the NBA is super strong. Community is important to them right now and a focus moving forward. Every day I remind myself that this is still a product that is very early on in its lifecycle, we haven't even begun to see what Top Shot could be.
Hardcourt is in testing still, might be a few months until we see anything concrete. Collectors in the future could be rewarded for collecting full challenges/sets. This is a platform for collectors, there is an emphasis on collecting. Bidding on Moments is something that will eventually be implemented, might not be coming anytime soon but it will come eventually. The eventual plan is to have base Common Moments readily available for all collectors and those higher quality Moments become available as collectors spend more time and money on the platform.
Podcasts 12 and 13
Podcasts twelve and thirteen are now available, the links are below:
Anchor: https://anchor.fm/hereforthemoments
Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/here-for-the-moments/id1558814411
Google Podcasts:
https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy81MGIyNDJkOC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==
Spotify:
Giveaway X
Giveaway ten is coming, but it might not be for another week or so. I want this next giveaway to be a big community effort and involve some of our community members/friends. Stay tuned for more details, and thank you to everyone who has participated in our past giveaways.
Facebook Page
In addition to our Substack newsletters, Discord and Twitter, a Facebook page is in the works. After the Facebook page is up and running, a Medium account to host articles for us is also on our roadmap. Thank you for being patient with us, we work very hard to put out entertaining content and it's your support that keeps us going.
It's a wrap! On Friday I'll have the “Office Hours Report” up as soon as they hit the Discord. Thanks for reading, appreciate ya!
You can find us on Twitter @HFTM_TopShot and listen to our podcast 'Here For The Moments' wherever podcasts can be heard. You can find us individually at the following:
Mike - @hftm_mike on Twitter and streetz_racer_00 on Top Shot.
Nick - @NickWilson2448 on Twitter and EMVPIID on Top Shot.
Stephen - @privites on Twitter and stephenprivitera on Top Shot.