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.

What is NBA Top Shot?

NBA Top Shot allows users to buy, sell, and collect NBA NFTs that showcase influential “Moments” minted on the FLOW blockchain. Ultimately, the system operates just like trading cards, except that it combines NBA highlights and digital art. The NBA licenses reels to Dapper Laps, who then creates Moments from the footage. Moments are video highlights that have been attached to NFTs. Each has a unique digital serial number that guarantees the authenticity and indicates how rare the Moment is. Moments are the foundation that make up the Top Shot ecosystem.

Sales Volume Traded and Number of Sales on NBA Top Shot

The charts above show that the volume and number of sales have been decreasing over time since April 2022. There was a small rise in volume due to the NBA playoffs, which 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. It can be observed that the volume 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. Despite some days having some spikes in volume, the latter has been going down since the end of the competition (May 29th).

Methodology

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, to uncover any correlations between a specific category (like play type or player) and the sales volume, we use the flow.core.dim_topshot_metadata table and join both tables using the NFT ids.

It is important to mentioin that when checking the prices of the NFTs in the NBA Top Shot marketplace, they show in USD, ETH or FLOW. However, the marketplace processes all the transactions on chain with the Dapper Utility Coin as currency. Even though this token is not really a stablecoin, its amount is equivalent to the dollar.

Sales Volume and Play Type

We use the flow.core.dim_topshot_metadata table to obtain the existing play types. When we observe the sales volume that each had there is a clear difference among them. On first place with 3M$ in volume, we have the play type “Rim”, which basically are those plays around the basket. With almost half of Rim’s volume, “3 pointer” plays are the second play type with the highest volume generated, which make sense as they are one of the most spectacular shots on basketball. The NBA has the greatest players in the world, so it is no surprise that the second play type with the most NFTs is “3 pointer”. Finally we have “Assist” and “Block” with 1.15 and 1.03M$ in volume, respectively.

Number of NFTs for each Play Type

After knowing which play types have generated more sales volume, let’s compare it to which play types do users hold the most. Basically, as all the existing NFTs must be owned by someone, this is equivalent to how many NFTs are there for each play type. On the left, we can see that the 4 play types which generated more volume, are those with the most amount of NFTs. Thus, they are not generally leading the volume chart because of their uniqueness, but because they are the play types that have the most amount of NFTs. That can be seen on the chart below, which reflects the volume correlated with the number of existing NFTs for each play type. Finally, on the right we can see how many NFTs were sold for each play type. Surprisingly, for all the play types but the last two, only 1 out of 4 NFTs have been sold, meaning that holders tend to keep most of the NFTs that they mint or buy. The “Dunk/Layup” and “2 Pointer” play types are those with the least NFTs released, and it can be observed that not many of them have been sold (probably due to their uniqueness).

Most Expensive NFTs by Play Type

If we filter the collection by the top 10 NBA Top Shot NFTs that were sold for the most amount of money, we see that the most expensive one was a “3 Pointer” play, and the other 9 NFTs that followed were “Rim” play types. As we saw previously, this is because these two categories are the ones with the most amount of NFTs.

On the other hand, analyzing the NFTs sold for the highest price for each play type, the two most expensive ones are “3 Pointer” and “Rim” for 15.38k$ and 12.47k$, as we just mentioned. However the third category that sold for the most amount of money was “Mid-Range” (for 7999$), which was the fifth play type by amount of Moments released. Even thought the “Assist” play type is the third category with the most amount of NFTs, it is not very appealing for the holders, as its NFTs price is much lower compared to the aforementioned categories.

Sales Volume and Player

Finally, we filter the volume by player in an attempt to uncover any correlations between them. The top 3 players that have generated the highest amount of volume are Magic Johnson, Stephen Curry and Scottie Barnes with 579k$, 460k$ and 273k$, respectively. Magic Johnson, known to be one of the greatest players of all time, has 1663 moments on the NBA Top Shot Collection, with 536 of them sold already (1 out of 3 users that minted an NFT from this player are still holding it). On the other hand, Stephen Curry is not only the Golden State Warriors star, but one of the greatest three point shooters of all times, who generates high value moments every game. That is reflected on the high amount of Moments he is in (18,900 NFTs). The third player with the highest sales volume is Scottie Barnes, which even though it only has 99 NFTs, they have been sold for a really high price.

Conclusions

In this dashboard we correlated the NBA Top Shot’s volume with the existing play types and players. The most important takeaways are the following:

• The sales volume of the NBA Top Shot collection has been slowly decreasing over time since the end of the Conference Finals.
• The play types that have generated the most volume are “Rim”, “3 Pointer” and “Assist”. However, this is because they also are the play types with the most amount of NFTs.
• 9 out of the 10 most expensive sold NFTs from the collection belong to the “Rim” category.
• The top 3 players that generated the highest amount of volume are Magic Johnson, Stephen Curry and Scottie Barnes, respectively. Stephen Curry because of the high amount of Moments he is in, while Scottie Barnes due to the uniqueness and high price of his NFTs.