Dapper's NBA Top Shot Launches Out of Beta With Samsung Galaxy Store Deal

Oct 1, 2020 at 13:00 UTCUpdated Oct 1, 2020 at 14:32 UTC.It's one game down and as many as six to go in this year's NBA Finals, and while the unusual season has kept fans outside the arena Dapper Labs is hoping to let them own a piece of on-court action.

Announced Thursday, Dapper Labs is rolling out its blockchain-based collectibles game, NBA Top Shot, to the public.

Currently in its beta version and developed in partnership with the National Basketball Association, Top Shot will also be available to U.S.-based Samsung users on the Galaxy app store.

Built using non-fungible tokens minted on the purpose-built Flow blockchain, Top Shot lets users collect, showcase and trade in-game "Moments" which capture moves made on the real court.

Rolled out in May after scoring financial backing from a handful of NBA stars, the platform has since invited 17,000 users on board, recorded 158,000 transactions and raked in over $2 million in revenue, according to data shared with CoinDesk.

While Top Shot's current interface uses NFTs to combine trading cards with digital clips, Dapper Labs also said it is developing a more immersive experience within Top Shot called "Hardcourt."

"It's a 3D game where you control players on a basketball court," Roham Gharegozlou, CEO of Dapper Labs, said in an interview.

"Crypto fans would be OK with a trading card game or fantasy sports thing. But to actually go mainstream and have a game that tens of millions of people play every day, you need to kind of make it look as good as all the options that are out there."

Dapper Labs said Hardcourt is under internal testing and is slated for release toward the end of Q4.Notably, Top Shot allows users to make payments using both fiat and cryptocurrencies.

Even though credit cards and crypto payments make up equal shares of the platform's revenue, credit cards account for three-quarters of all transactions made, according to data shared by Dapper Labs.Disclosure.