The Summer of Squad Goals Crafting Challenges Starts Now

Crafting Challenges are a game changer. They empower NBA Top Shot’s community to reduce the overall supply of Moments in our ecosystem while earning special rewards in the process. 

We’re so excited to announce an action-packed summer of Crafting, and love hearing your feedback and questions as we continue to grow this powerful new feature.

The first Crafting Challenge in NBA Top Shot history recently came to a close. With it, 5,000+ Moments were burned (including 4,000+ Rares), permanently removing them from the Top Shot ecosystem forever. 

Over the span of the 96 hours this flagship Crafting Challenge was active, our community burned, on average, one Moment per minute in pursuit of this incredible dunk from a 52-point career best Ja Morant performance.  

• 2,036 Rare Ja Morant Moments were burned, some of which were part of the 3,315 Rare Throwdowns Moments burned across Series 2 (1,788) and Series 3 (1,527), and 743 Rare Moments burned across Series 3’s 2022 All-Star Game (495) and Series 2’s Rising Stars (248)
  

• 892 Common Base Set (Series 2) Moments were burned
  
  
• The following players all had 100 or more Rare Moments burned, in some cases reducing the overall supply of their Throwdowns Moments by over 10%: Naz Reid (176), Kelly Oubre Jr. (156), Daniel Gafford (153), Doug McDermott (153), Isaac Okoro (150), De’Aaron Fox (147), Myles Turner (125), Alex Caruso (113), Derrick Jones Jr. (103), Jordan Clarkson (103) and Malik Monk (100) 

Looking ahead to the immediate future of Crafting Challenges, we’re ready to share more specifics as to what you can expect, starting Tuesday, June 28, and answer questions we’ve received from our community in response to the details we’ve shared to date. 

In every Crafting Challenge we offer, we will keep one core principal at the heart of the decisions we make and challenges we build — Crafting Challenges will not add more Moments than they remove. By design, every NBA Crafting Challenge and WNBA Crafting Challenge is “deflationary” and will reduce the total supply of Moments on Top Shot.  

Starting on Tuesday, June 28, there will be 2 or more Crafting Challenges per week — on Tuesdays and Fridays — dedicated to the Series 4 “Squad Goals” Rare set and the 30 historical, truly unique teamwork-oriented Moments from the 2021-22 NBA season we’ve set aside for this occasion. Here’s a look at the order of upcoming Squad Goals Crafting Challenges, so you can know when to expect to have the opportunity to burn and earn a new Moment from your favorite team.

‍In the process of these 30 Crafting Challenges tied to Squad Goals, we expect that Common, Fandom and Rare Moments across Series 1, Series 2, Summer 21 and Series 3 will be burned. The requirements for each challenge will be unique and deliberately unpredictable, and we look forward to our community taking on each challenge as they’re revealed. 

All 30 Squad Goals Moments are attributed to a player on a team but truly reflect a complete team effort, similar to what you’ve seen previously at the heart of some of the most memorable Moments on Top Shot — Kevin Durant’s Series 2 Metallic Gold LE Dunk and Deandre Ayton’s Common 2021 NBA Playoffs Layup, for example.

While there was interest, and thorough discussion, in making these 30 Squad Goals Moments attributed to each respective team — rather than individual players — this feature is still in development.

We did not want to sacrifice the opportunity for our community to participate in Crafting Challenges and reduce Moment supply over the coming weeks and months at the expense of how each of these new Challenge Rewards is minted and categorized as a collectible. 

As we look ahead to the 2022-23 NBA season and the Series 4 Moments that will come from it, we are working with our partners and product team to explore the introduction of Moments that are attributed to teams, not individual players, and are excited by the possibilities of what this can offer to our content curation team, challenge creation team and community.

WHAT ABOUT COMMON CRAFTING CHALLENGES? 

Crafting Challenges across every tier will be a big part of our strategy for Series 4, including at the Common level. For starters, we intend for a majority of Flash Challenges next NBA season to include a consumptive layer, meaning Moments will need to be burned in order for collectors to claim their Challenge Rewards.

In the interim, we look at Squad Goals as an exciting opportunity to gather more insights with regards to crafting at a more exclusive tier.

We are looking into Common Crafting Challenges in the coming months.

Stay tuned, as we may even launch a community vote in the near future to have our most passionate collectors help decide on whether we should launch a new set this summer that would exclusively require Common Moments to be crafted into Fandom rewards.

SERIES 3 VS. SERIES 4 

We’ve heard feedback and questions as to why, and how, 2021-22 NBA highlights — the plays that reflect the vast majority of Moments in Series 3 — are being attributed to Series 4.   

Our goal is always to provide our community with amazing highlights and stories that reflect the best of the NBA and WNBA, minted on the blockchain as NFTs that you’ll view and value as special collectibles. 

The logistics of when those opportunities become possible and how the actual blockchain technology behind NBA Top Shot operates, where a new Series cannot “open” until the previous one is “closed,” can create unique situations like this one, where the best Moments from a particular year in basketball history can span across different categories and “boxes of information.” 

Series One’s Run It Back set and Summer 2021’s Archive set both embody the best of the 2013-14 NBA season. 

Series Three’s WNBA Player’s Choice 2021 set and the Summer 2021 sets of WNBA 2021 (Fandom), In Her Bag (Legendary) and WNBA: Best of 2021 (Common) all embody the best of the 2021 WNBA season. 

We don’t anticipate the creation of new Challenge Reward Moments attributed to a previous season happening often, but it can happen, and we wanted to provide some transparency as to why and how. 

One very important note and piece of clarity in reference to the Squad Goals Moments is that these 2021-22 highlights which will become Series 4 Moments are considered “historical” in the context of collecting and checklists. They will not impact your ability to complete a Series 4 team checklist — but will impact the most expansive instance of a team checklist that includes having one of every series and player, including any historical Moments, whether they’re from 2021-22 or an older season, akin to Run It Back, Archive Set, Anthology and All-Star Classics.

We look forward to seeing the impact of Squad Goals and all of the exciting possibilities that crafting and burning will offer in the future.