On Friday, August 12, NBA Top Shot Chief of Staff Jacob Eisenberg spoke to the Top Shot community via Twitter Spaces. Below are notes from that conversation, edited for clarity.
A recording can be found on Twitter, and the NBA Top Shot Podcast. New to Top Shot? Start your collection of officially licensed video highlights today.
When will the Series 4 roadmap be available?
It’s still many weeks away and will definitely be shared in advance of the NBA season. We’re going through the process of everything now, working with our partners and internal teams, to get everything finalized.
What should we expect between now and the Series 4 roadmap?
For starters, I wouldn’t expect the Series 4 roadmap to look like the Series 3 roadmap.
There are certain things we’ve already committed to for Series 4 – net neutral circulating supply being one of them. For every Moment we add, one will be removed from circulation via Crafting, Locker Room, and locked for Leaderboards.
Circulating supply considers traded-in Moments, burned Moments and locked Moments.
We’ve already committed that the Series 4 Base Set will be more constrained and scarce than the Series 3 Base Set. That will be our easiest path to net neutral circulating supply.
Going into this new year, we have a lot more technology and tooling at our disposal to improve our experiences around pack drops, Challenges and your collections.
You won’t have to wait all the way until October to get more information about some of the exciting things we’re working toward, but that’s likely when the big picture will be shared.
Will there be any new NBA drops before the Series 4 roadmap is released?
Yes, there will be at least one NBA drop before the NBA regular season that is a historic NBA drop. There will be a lot of new Top Shot Debuts and I believe it’s one of our best drops to date. You can expect that before October.
When can we expect Player Leaderboards and what kind of perks should we expect?
Every player will get a Leaderboard, but not every player will get Leaderboard Rewards. Their status in the league and accolades they achieve may likely drive which Player Leaderboards come with certain rewards for participating.
With the NBA and WNBA, we’re looking at over 500 Player Leaderboards, and it’s unrealistic to provide rewards for all of them.
If you’re explicitly planning to lock a player’s Moments to a Player Leaderboard to earn rewards, feel free to wait for more details about the rewards to be shared — but of course, these individual Moments do contribute to Team Leaderboards (aside from All-Star Game Moments).
Can you provide an update on auto-updates to Top Shot Score?
It’s in progress, but Checklists were a priority to ship first. The cadence to which the scores will auto-update are still being determined, but this is currently in development with our team. But your score will never be penalized for locking.
Are there future plans to make potential prizes like the All-Star 1/1 NFTs more accessible to a larger audience?
There are no plans to revisit that 1/1 All-Star VIP Pass NFT concept – that was a special occasion for the NBA’s 75th anniversary. It’s worth noting that 1 of those All-Star VIP Pass NFTs were given away in a contest to anyone who opted to participate.
In general, we want to be more explicit about what rewards will be and how you can earn them, and want to be more inclusive about giving more people the opportunity to collect something special.
In relation to the first Team Leaderboard Reward, for the top 750 for each team, will there be an announcement of when the date and time of the snapshot will occur? Or will it be a blind reward snapshot?
Give us until the end of August to provide updates on this. The “snapshot” will be on or before October 1, 2022, but we are still exploring some of the mechanics around the final delivery of the reward. We anticipate the delivery of the reward will happen after the snapshot, not concurrently with the reward.
The first reward snapshot will not necessarily operate with the same mystery or rules as the remaining rewards for Team Leaderboards.
Are there any upcoming reveals for big time player partnerships or collaborations with Top Shot?
We are working on plans of that nature and can’t share that information right now, but you will hear updates from us when it’s time to reveal what we’ve been working on.
Do you envision that Team Leaderboards will be used as a criteria or metric for future IRL experiences?
In the long term, we do expect Leaderboards to serve as a way of determining IRL experience winners. We want to ensure we can add WNBA and NBA favorite team selection, and “cool downs” to prevent people from switching their favorite teams all the time, before we lean into that more.
How have NBA teams reacted to Team Leaderboards so far?
Some have adopted quicker than others, but we have long-term ambitious plans over the next 5 to 10 years for all 30 teams in the NBA. In the short term, the next 1 to 5 years, it’s unrealistic to expect us to deliver the same level of IRL fandom experience for all 30 fanbases, but Leaderboard Rewards as NFTs will have as much parity as possible across all 30 teams.
Have there been any internal talks about another edition of “Giftback” or Marketplace Fee Return?
It’s not something we’re looking to bring back. We’ve looked at a lot of data from that event, and we believe there are more efficient ways for us to deliver and provide meaningful value to our community in fun and efficient ways in Series 4.
When it comes to Average Sales Price in relation to Top Shot Score, when should we expect that to update automatically?
Your Top Shot Score will update whether or not it is locked – and your Top Shot Score will always remain neutral or go up based on these changes. You’ll never be negatively penalized in Top Shot Score for holding a Moment.
I don’t have a defined time for when this feature will go live, but it is being worked on.
When it comes to Series 1 Moments being released in Locker Packs, when should we expect all of the Series 1 Moments to be fully distributed and circulating?
We’ll be data-driven from release to release in terms of the supply. The first batch of Locker Packs (Release 11) will have 2,000 Series 1 Moments in it.
It looks like there are over 5.2 million Moments currently sitting in the Locker Room. Any plans to burn them?
We have no immediate or current plans to burn Moments in the Locker Room. We know it’s something collectors have mentioned many times, but you should not expect it.
Will there ever be a scenario where the number of Moments coming into the Locker Room are equal to the number coming out?
You should not expect it. The Locker Room is deflationary by design. If a “3 for 3” scenario ever came about, it would be a small-scale test of a new feature or for a very good reason, and not a full blown change to the rules.
When it comes to Set Locking, a Base Set or Playoff Set can be quite a large undertaking. Is there any progress to simplifying the locking process of huge sets or multiple repeat Moments from a single player?
We will absolutely develop a confirmation that you’ve locked a set. There will be an indicator that you’ve successfully locked a set on your profile..
We are not currently working on the ability to lock more than 100 Moments at a time, or auto-lock a complete set, and encourage collectors to take their time locking their Moments and sets.
Can you provide updates on the Employee Play Policy, the Mobile App and In-Arena Top Shot Kiosks?
The Employee Play Policy will be revisited during the next NBA offseason. We do not expect to enact that policy during this season. We want to build safeguards to minimize unintended risks and mistakes before we launch it.
Our Mobile App is in development and we are targeting the end of 2022 as a deadline to deliver the NBA Top Shot Mobile App. We are targeting Christmas for release.
We did the first Kiosk at Summer League in 2021 and learned a lot from it. Ultimately, the experience we tested was too time consuming for an in-arena experience. It’s not ready for a smooth first time user experience, and also would require deals with the NBA’s 30 teams and arenas to execute at scale.
The appeal of a kiosk, from our POV, is an exclusive Moment from an event you attended — and we will be able to execute that concept and deliver unique Moments tied to events you attend without an IRL Kiosk at the game.
Get ready for the Top Shot Tour as a lever we pull on this front.
