Crafting has officially arrived at NBA Top Shot. Few features have been requested as often or as fervently as crafting, which would serve both as a deflationary mechanism (i.e. permanently removing supply) and a way to put your collection to work, potentially resulting in more valuable Moments. The Ja Morant Throwdowns Crafting Challenge gave us a glimpse of this new tool, but the more fascinating question is what comes next?

JA RECAP (almost 5k Moments removed)

For the initial Ja challenge, crafting exists as a new style of Challenge where specific Moments/players are burned to create a new Moment.  

Here’s the breakdown on the Ja Challenge:

• 10 Moments needed for crafting
• 1 new Ja Moment as a reward
• 9 net Moments removed from supply per completion
• 539 Completions
• 539 * 9 = 4,851 Moments removed

Sweet! But before we jump to conclusions one way or another, some context is important. 

• 26,828,329 total Moments in circulation
• 4,483,745 additional Moments sitting in the Locker Room (as of 6/6/22)
• Ja Challenge reduced supply by…0.015%. 

Which isn’t a bad start! If the EV of the reward is good, that could lead to a solid value proposition while simultaneously creating some interesting market dynamics and game theory opportunities for the other Moments involved in the crafting process.  But it also got us thinking about the larger macro opportunities for crafting and burning to reduce supply on a much larger scale.

EDITOR’S NOTE: everything below is entirely illustrative/speculative and not meant to be construed otherwise.

THE LOCKER ROOM (4M+ moments potentially removed now, more ongoing) 

Those 4 million plus Locker Room moments could be prime candidates for permanent burning.  Perhaps as a one-time event to instill community confidence in permanent supply reduction.  Or in an ongoing product shift where Locker Room packs are no longer available and trading a moment in for a trade ticket is a permanent burn.  In this scenario, trade tickets would still still be used for pack purchases, eventual merch purchases, etc..  

FLASH CHALLENGES (6.1M+ moments potentially removed in S4)

Now let’s take it a step further. In the Twitter Spaces following the Ja announcement last week, it was stated that S4 Flash Challenges could utilize crafting. With the Series just a couple weeks away from coming to a close, let’s use the S3 Flash Challenge data to gauge the potential impact. All data as of 6/13/22:

• 162 Flash Challenges in S3
• 746,114 completions
• 6,866,936 Moments used in Challenge completions
• 6,120,822 net Moment reduction from supply (6,866,936 used – 746,114 Reward Moments)

If more than 6.1M Moments were truly removed from supply, that’d be almost a 23% total reduction (using today’s total supply), which could have major market ramifications. Of course, the total number of completions may have been lower in a crafting scenario, as collectors may not have wanted to permanently burn all these Moments. That said, the vast majority of these Flash Challenge completions relied on Moments with large circulation counts, so in most cases you’re not burning something super valuable. 

TEAM BASED CRAFTING (270k – 1M+ initially)

Top Shot has said that team-based crafting challenges will be a fast follow to the Ja challenge.  At the outset, these team challenges sound like single instance, Top Shot initiated challenges.  Let’s suppose the initial math laid out something like this:

• 10 moments required per challenge
• 9 moments per challenge net supply reduction (if reward is new moment)
• 30 teams
• 1000 avg completions per team: 9x30x1000= 270,000 moments
• 2000 avg completions per team: 9x30x2000= 540,000 moments 
• 3000 avg completions per team: 9x30x3000= 810,000 moments
• 4000 avg completions per team: 9x30x4000= 1,080,000 moments

It’s not difficult to see the potential impact were these team challenges to occur more regularly.

*One quick foot note: last week, we published a Q&A on how the Washington Wizards community, the District of Collectors, have unveiled an innovative crafting strategy of their own where S2 Commons are crafted into Rares and the Commons are then bundled and repurposed to help new collectors start their collection. Maybe this creative idea could be used across the platform:  what if a % of Moments traded in via Trade Tickets or other crafting mechanisms could then be redistributed specifically to new users based on favorite team? Imagine you’re a new collector and you immediately get airdropped a curated assortment of 10 Moments from your favorite team that were collecting dust in the Locker Room. Not a bad way to get started.

While replicating the Wizards approach would not permanently remove excess supply, it would reallocate these Moments to new collectors, providing a sign-up bonus and instant engagement, while also taking steps towards reaching a more equitable scenario between supply and demand.

CRAFTING ON DEMAND (??!!)

While Crafting Challenges and specific Trade Ticket opportunities are great, a crafting on demand mechanism is a potential Holy Grail. 

Picture this: we’re in the doldrums of summer, no NBA games on the schedule for months, and you’re sitting there just waiting for the next pack drop, which will happen in three weeks. But wait! A mechanism with tons of strategic game theory is available on demand! You take a look at your collection and decide to try your luck, crafting a bunch of your S3 60k duplicates whenever your heart desires for a chance at a new Moment that might be way better! Whether you strike gold or strike out on your pull, the ability to physically engage with your collection whenever you want, Challenge or not, would add a dynamic new variable to the Top Shot equation. Imagine something like this:

• Burn (10) S1 Common Moments and receive one S1 Rare Moment
• Burn (10) S2 Moments and receive one S1 Moment
• Burn (20) S2 Common Moments and receive one S2 Rare Moment
• Burn (5) S3 Moments and receive one S2 Moment
• Burn (10) S3 Moments and receive a new S3 Moment (1% chance at Legendary, 10% chance at Rare, 89% chance at Common)
• Burn (50) S3 Moments and receive one S1 Moment

This is simply for illustrative purposes, but you get the point. It opens up a massive amount of opportunity and flexibility, and could quickly result in burning (or redistributing to new users) a ton of Moments, addressing the platform’s biggest concern.  And it could of course be gated in some way to prevent abuse – perhaps a feature that is earned and usable a fixed number of times per user.

Love these ideas? Hate these ideas? As always, we want to hear from you! Shoot us a tweet and tell us what you think.