What is Flow?

Conventional Blockchain application development used to be done on Ethereum, but technological progress and the increase in users has brought with it scalability issues. Flow was born as a new generation blockchain to solve these problems.

It has a unique architecture that allows it to scale without fragmentation in a secure, fast and simple way. In other words, its speed and performance are superior, and it also maintains a friendly environment for developers.

Flow operates with the Proof of Stake (PoS) algorithm. Its network protocol is designed to scale thanks to a multifunctional architecture in which each node fulfills its own function. And with the novelty that, instead of implementing a horizontal flow, the Flow platform uses the so-called vertical flow. Its advantage is that it separates the objective (deterministic) processes from the subjective (non-deterministic) processes.

NBA Top Shot’s Sales

To obtain the number of NBA Top Shot’s sales we use the flow.core.fact_nft_sales table. Then, we count the distinct transaction ids (which represent the number of sale transactions) and filter by the collection’s address and by the successful transactions only. Finally, we filter by the NBA Conference Finals dates (May 17th - May 29th).

NBA Top Shot’s Volume

To obtain the number of NBA Top Shot’s volume we use the flow.core.fact_nft_sales table. Then, we sum the sales prices by day and filter by the collection’s address and by the successful transactions only. Finally, we filter by the NBA Conference Finals dates (May 17th - May 29th).

The NBA playoffs started after both the regular season and the play-in tournament. Specifically, they started on Saturday, April 16. All first games of the 8 first round matchups were played on April 16th and 17th (4 games each day). The conference NBA finals between the Boston Celtics, Dallas Mavericks, Miami Heat and the Golden State Warriors started on May 17th and lasted until May 29th. There is a small rise in the number of sales during the first weeks of playoffs, where the average number of transactions oscilated around 35k sales per day. When the conference finals started, the number of sales in the NBA Top Shot collection didn’t increase at all, with the max amount of sales per day during this period being 27k sales on May 18th.

The same pattern developed for the sales volume (in USD) of the NBA Top Shot collection during the conference finals. It was lower than during the playoffs phase most days, with the exception of May 19th, where the volume traded was 826k. This was because of users buying higher value moments, as if we correlate the volume with the number of sales on that day there was no spike on the latter. It is worth mentioning that as the time passed by during the playoffs, many teams started to get eliminated, so the hype of the team's fans faded away as their teams got removed from the competition.

Sales and Volume by Team

The four teams remaining in the conference finals were the Boston Celtics, Dallas Mavericks, Miami Heat and the Golden State Warriors. Thus, there were more moments released in the NBA Top Shot Collection for these teams during this period. This is reflected in both the number of sales and the sales volume (in USD), as these were the top 4 teams. However, the order of the teams is not the same in both.

In the number of sales, the team that sold the most amount of moments was the Dallas Mavericks, followed closely by the Golden State Warriors. On the other hand, there is a noticeable difference in the sales volume, where the Golden State Warriors were the top 1 team, followed by the Mavericks. This is because the moments sold from the Warriors were more expensive than the moments sold by the Dallas. The latter have their star, Luka Doncic, but the Warriors have more playmaker players, with their main star being Stephen Curry, one of the greatest three point shooters of all times, who generates high value moments every game.

Sales and Volume(Warriors, Celtics, Mavericks, Heat)

On the eastern conference, the Miami Heat faced the Boston Celtics, with a victory of the Celtics with a close 4-3 score. Overall, the number of sales for the moments of these two teams was not very high during the conference finals, with only a peak on May 22nd of 1667 Miami Heat NFTs sold, and 1558 Boston Celtics NFTs sold. On the other hand, the Western Conference faced the Golden State Warriors against the Dallas Mavericks, where the first team won by 4 to 1. May 22nd was also the day with the most sales for the Warriors (1851 sales), while the day with the most amount of sales for the Mavericks was May 25th, with 1834 sales due to a large amount of moments being released for this team. In terms of volume, the aforementioned days are those with the highest volume.

Conclusions

In this dashboard we analyzed the NBA Top Shot’s number of sales and volume during the playoffs and conference finals, and observed a decrease in both during the conference finals. Then, for the 4 teams that played them (Boston Celtics, Dallas Mavericks, Miami Heat and the Golden State Warriors), the Dallas Mavericks and the Golden State Warriors had the most moments sold and the most volume traded. Despite this, as previously mentioned, this did not increase the overall volume of the collection compared to the the previous weeks. There was more hype at the beginning of the playoffs, which slowly faded away as more teams got eliminated.