When Top Shot launched our closed Beta last summer we wanted to provide access to the best Moments in NBA history at varying levels of scarcity so that collectors could curate a collection that suited them and their fandom.
So what, right?
Well, this determination allowed us to make packs available on a first come, first served basis, where we generated consistent yet not overwhelming demand. We routinely sold out quickly, but if you showed up on time, you could pretty easily get your hands on the pack you wanted. We also allowed collectors to purchase up to 10 packs at a time, which some collectors did.
For the first six weeks, we didn’t have a Marketplace for buying and selling. If you wanted a specific Moment, you had to buy a pack. That was it. Plain and simple. And if you wanted to find a specific play, you might have had to buy a lot of packs until you ripped one containing that elusive Moment.
But as our closed Beta progressed, we released the first version of the Marketplace and unlocked a completely new method of collecting what you love -- a Marketplace where fans and collectors are in the driver’s seat. Though great in some ways, this has also been a bit of a double-edged sword. While it put power in the hands of the collectors, it also made us a platform that's sometimes driven by external, valuation-centric tools.
TAKE ME TO THE MARKETPLACE >>
In reality, the Marketplace wasn’t what defined Top Shot and our path forward. Our hand on scarcity was forced by the virality we experienced beginning midway through January. We quickly went from common packs available for most collectors who showed up on time for a drop to a broken, free-for-all experience. We still pre-announced drop times and tens of thousands of buyers showed up to click the same button over and over again with the hope that the site would redirect them to their Dapper wallet where they could ultimately secure a pack or packs.
This experience wasn’t ideal. It included botters and multi-accounters which we worked tirelessly to combat. The frustrating collector experience was compounded by some legitimate collectors getting multiple packs while other honest hopefuls were shut out due to nothing more than bad luck getting through the website’s heavy traffic load.
That broken experience quickly led to us engaging in Stress Tests where we rolled out packs, sometimes 5,000 at a time, sometimes 25,000 at a time at all hours of the day to allow us to quickly deploy and test new fixes and determine what additional complications or bottlenecks they uncovered. This left us with the question of whether or not we had a sustainable process.
Ultimately the answer was no.
So we iterated. The next iteration looked like what anyone who has joined Top Shot in the last 5 months is accustomed to, but without any frills. We vetted a new queue system which allowed any collector on Top Shot equal access, probabilistically, to a pack. We began announcing drops, sometimes well ahead of time and sometimes without hype, and running them through that queue system where every collector could enter the queue once and get a randomized spot for the chance to buy a pack.
This marked a fundamental shift in the distribution of Top Shot Moments.
At this point in the cycle we had an overwhelming demand for packs. We couldn’t produce enough Moments to fill these packs and needed to grant access on a fair and consistent basis. This led to us limiting packs to one per collector in any given drop or release, though many collectors remained steadfast in their desire for as many packs as they could get their hands on.
As the queue system became entrenched in the platform and the collector base grew we knew we needed more solutions. We wanted to make sure that the collectors who were building the most extensive collections had the best chances of scoring scarcer rare and legendary packs in the future. Given that rare and legendary drops are much less frequent than their common counterparts, we knew this could be a well-earned reward for the hard work put in by those collectors. In order to achieve this goal we set out to determine eligibility based on what collectors already held in their collections.
The early iterations included qualifiers on the number of Moments owned (Hustle and Show Drop 1) or even specific types of Moments (Premium Pack Drop 2) needed to access queues. We tested snapshots and pre-announcements and throughout we gathered data to determine how to best move forward.
Shortly after, we rolled out the first version of Collector Score, a definitive way to measure a collector’s collection. This also provided us with a handy way to provide access to queues alongside dynamic drop specific bonuses. To this point we had maintained a simple queue system. One queue. One entry per collector. One random place in line. One pack per collector.
This brings us to the present day which saw us go through our first multi-level drop recently…
MORE FROM OUR ECONOMIST TO COME LATER THIS WEEK...
