NBA Top Shot Community,
We write to you today with an update regarding an incident that has impacted some of our collectors. We deeply regret the disruption caused by recent events and will use this blog to share details about the issue, how we’re rectifying the situation, and what we’re doing moving forward to prevent this issue from happening again.
Issue Overview:
On December 29th, we ran a query to burn all of our unsold WNBA inventory (with the exception of special serial numbers). Unfortunately, this query failed to properly exclude Moments that were in unopened Packs sitting in our collectors’ accounts. This impacted hundreds of collectors.
How it Happened:
When Moments are burned via crafting Challenges, Burn Leaderboards, or Top Shot executing a burn, the Moments are irrevocably destroyed. This is not a front end display change – the Moments are forever destroyed from the blockchain.
In this specific instance, we looked to burn our unreleased inventory of WNBA content to uphold a promise to burn unreleased Moments before the end of the year.
When we executed the transactions to burn the unreleased inventory, there was an issue with our tooling safeguards, and they did not properly discern that Moments sitting in collectors’ unopened Packs were theirs and not “unreleased.”
This happened because the transfer of ownership of Moments from our inventory to a collector's account is executed on NBA Top Shot only when a Pack is opened, even though packs are deterministic and pre-packed. This technically enabled an ill-fated burn transaction to be executed by our account.
Compensation for Affected Collectors:
We understand the impact on our collectors and the strain on trust that an issue like this creates, and we are committed to making things right for our affected community members.
As such, here’s what we’re committed to doing:
- Collectors with compromised WNBA Legendary packs will receive a full refund of the Pack they purchased in the form of withdrawable credit. In addition to the 100% refund, these collectors will receive a further credit drop worth 33% of the price of the Pack they purchased. This credit will be delivered before the end of next week.
- Collectors with a compromised WNBA Rare pack will receive a full refund in the form of withdrawable credit for the amount of the Pack they purchased. In addition to the 100% refund, these collectors will receive a further credit drop worth 33% of the price of the Pack they purchased. This credit will be delivered before the end of next week.
- Customers with a compromised Common Pack will receive a full refund of the Pack they purchased with an additional Common Pack as a token of our apology later this month.
- All Moments with special serial numbers that were withheld from the burn will be distributed to our WNBA Captains for prizing and engagement later on.
All affected customers will also retain the original compromised packs. To ensure safety and fairness for all of our collectors, all Packs from these drops will no longer be eligible to be listed in the Packs Marketplace. We will be reaching out to impacted collectors directly via email before the end of next week.
Preventive Measures:
To ensure a similar incident does not happen again, we are implementing two necessary measures:
- We will pause any burning of unsold inventory until we perform a thorough stress test of the burn process and reassess our burning tools for quality assurance and safeguards.
- Development of safeguards to eliminate risk in burn transactions, providing an additional layer of protection, in addition to higher involvement of our QA team.
Your trust and satisfaction remains our top priority. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused and appreciate your understanding and patience as we work through these challenges.
