Insights from an NFT Airdrop experience: Part 1
ICC Crictos by FanCraze: Discovering the project
How did I find the project?
Stumbled over this tweet by ICC on twitter. Figured Rohit Sharma had made a similar announcement. Hooked
My Due Diligence checklist
Is this actually a project or someone just hacked their twitter accounts? (Yup, in crypto, that’s where you should start your DD from)
Link to a landing page (mentions of future utilities, not just a generative PFP)
Public founders (easily found on LinkedIn, one co-founder is ex-IPL)
Backed by Sequoia, Tiger Global (Enough said, its more than a project)
Seems legit, what else
Built on flow blockchain, Dapper Labs (Creator of flow) on the cap table
Exclusive deal with ICC and a few cricketers (even if it's just a collectible, these facts will give it value)
Active discord (500+ consistently active, 2 mods always active)
Conclusion: I have found India’s NBA TopShot and that too very close to launch :D
More research
I had previously heard of NBA TopShot and had some context on how NFTs made sense as better collectibles than trading cards. But in terms of how big this space was or how valuable these collectibles could be, I had no idea. Also, my main presumption was all these consumer-facing web3 apps are very skewed in terms of unit economics and only a few select traders come out very profitable, and the rest of the audience loses out their capital in blockchain transaction fees.
Here’s what I found:
Dapper Labs owns this landscape. NBA TopShot was built by them, the rest of the official products by different sports associations are also on the flow blockchain. Some are built by Dapper (NBA, UFC) and most are backed by Dapper (FanCraze for all Cricket Leagues)
The Flow Blockchain definitely solves the user onboarding problem. The signing up process (ie creating a wallet on the blockchain), doing payments (even in crypto) looks very similar to a web2 experience but actually happens on the blockchain
Flow also solves the transaction inefficiencies. The fee is almost nil when compared to Ethereum’s Gas Fee + the transaction processing speed is faster as well. This is because the flow blockchain is purpose-built for NFT marketplaces and p2e games. The architecture is different (each node specializes in a particular type of function rather than distributing workload evenly), it follows a PoS consensus contrary to Ethereum’s current PoW.
One inhibition I had, which is almost a by-product (2) ie the easy onboarding is, I wasn’t clear what part of the experience is actually decentralized. I don’t have clear answers to questions like:
Where are my NFTs stored? Is it my wallet on the flow blockchain or a FanCraze wallet on the flow blockchain mapped to my account in the FanCraze centralised DB
For Ethereum, there are many third-party platforms that fetch data from the blockchain and help one validate. Etherscan, rainbow.me etc. are some examples. There is a Flowscan, but not nearly as holistic.
Metamask doesn’t support the Flow Mainnet yet, couldn’t find any other dedicated wallet provider too. Probably because Flow just launched in 2020, interoperability might still be being worked on
Ultimately it’s a marketplace of unique assets and the value of those assets changes based on challenges/ raffles happening on the platform. Who controls these challenges, if it’s the FanCraze team or is there a DAO, how do they ensure no conflict of interest. If it were Ethereum, we could figure it out. (Just like OpenSea executives were found front running NFTs that were to be featured on the homepage)
Anyway, I was up for putting money in and buying some collectibles. Sports highlights as NFTs is a tested idea, solves real problems and this is the same being built for cricket backed by folks seasoned in this technology. Plus I believe, most information transparency inhibitions would be solved automatically once both the project and flow ecosystem progresses.
…….Cont….(PART 2)