What You Need to Know
Today, NBA Top Shot, built by Dapper Labs on the Flow network, is announcing that every Moment on the platform is and will continue to be preserved on a decentralized network called the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). The video highlight, the thumbnail, the metadata. Fully authenticated and publicly verifiable by anyone, anywhere, without needing an account or permission from anyone. Live right now.
This makes NBA Top Shot the only sports collectible any owner can independently authenticate end to end with nothing except an internet connection.
🔗 Verify any Moment yourself using the IPFS Reference App
Note: You can verify CIDs and retrieve media through the Reference App, any public IPFS gateway (ipfs.io, dweb.link), or your own node — Dapper's gateway is just one option
What Just Changed
You have always had full ownership of your Moments on NBA Top Shot. Your ownership record on the network has always been permanent. What is new is that the actual video highlight is now stored in the same manner and can be independently authenticated as well.
Digital collectibles haven’t historically been able to make that same guarantee.
The video of your favorite game winner. The thumbnail, the play metadata, the artwork. Those files — the actual thing your Moment is — are now preserved on an open network and carries a unique cryptographic fingerprint anyone can check. The highlight is now as authentic and durable as the Moment itself.
Why This Matters
In recent years, multiple platforms sold people digital assets, then shut down. The assets either became inaccessible or lost their meaning entirely. Collectors learned the hard way that buying a digital collectible from acompany is not the same as owning one you can prove and hold yourself.
Decentralized storage of content closes that gap. Content-addressed storage on IPFS means the file is its own address. Anyone can host it. Anyone can retrieve it. Anyone can authenticate it. No single point of failure.
NBA Top Shot has migrated our entire catalog to decentralized storage. Every Edition ever minted should be on IPFS from every Series across the full portfolio.
While other platforms across the space were pulling back, Dapper Labs invested in the infrastructure to make these collectibles truly self-sufficient. Your collection is anchored to the decentralized web, verifiable by anyone, and built to last.
How It Works
For collectors who want to understand what’s happening under the hood.
IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) is a decentralized storage protocol. Instead of files living on one company’s server at a specific URL, IPFS stores files across a distributed network of nodes. Files are identified by their content, not by where they’re stored. The same file always produces the same address (a content hash, or CID), and anyone running an IPFS node can serve that file to anyone who requests it.
Here’s what that looks like for your Moments:
- What’s stored. Assets are stored on IPFS at the Set level. Every play’s video highlight, artwork, and metadata are pinned to the decentralized network. All Moments within the same Set share the same media assets (whether you own serial #1 or serial #1,000, the video and artwork are the same), so this efficiently covers every Moment ever minted.
- How it’s linked. Today, the IPFS Reference App is the bridge between your Moment and its preserved media. The app maps every NBA Top Shot play to its IPFS content, letting you look up any Moment and retrieve its decentralized storage record. The next step is embedding the IPFS content hashes (CIDs) directly into the on-network Edition Metadata on Flow, creating a fully independent link between every Moment and its media that anyone can check. That work is underway.
- What “permanent” means. Because IPFS is content-addressed and decentralized, the files don’t depend on any single server or URL staying online. As long as at least one node on the network is hosting the file, it’s accessible. Every file on IPFS has a unique content hash. If anyone tried to alter the content, the hash would change, and the tampering would be immediately obvious. The content is its own proof of authenticity.
- What “verifiable” means. Using the IPFS Reference App, anyone can look up any NBA Top Shot Moment, retrieve its media directly from the decentralized network, and confirm it’s genuine. No account needed. No permission required.
That’s the end state we’re building toward: a fully independent link between your Moment and its media that doesn’t require any intermediary.
That’s the standard. Not “trust us.” The standard is: verify it yourself.
🔗 See it in action with the IPFS Reference App
What This Means Going Forward
This applies to all NBA Top Shot Moments, retroactively. And from here on out, every new Moment will have its media anchored to IPFS from the point of mint. When packs drop, the Moments inside them are permanent and provable from the second you own them.
This is also the foundation for what comes next. The same architecture that powers on-network permanence for NBA Top Shot is being built to be able to extend across all Dapper Labs products.
For collectors who have been here since the early days, this validates what you believed in. You asked for this. Loudly and repeatedly. And now it’s here.
For people who stepped away because they weren’t sure their collection was safe and real, this is worth another look. Open the verification app and see for yourself.
And for anyone who’s been skeptical about whether digital collectibles can actually deliver on the promise of real ownership, we’d just say: go verify a Moment. That’s the whole point. You don’t have to take our word for it.
We’ll continue to provide updates, as well as instructions for collectors who want to pin their favorite players and Moments themselves, ensuring their permanence.
This represents the work of the Dapper Labs engineering team to deliver on a commitment made at the beginning of this season. NBA Top Shot now preserves all assets on a decentralized network, and any owner can independently authenticate — setting a new standard for digital ownership in sports.
