Top Insights

• CryptoKitties, Dapper Labs' first NFT project, was the successor to NBA Top Shot for a number of reasons:
  • The ICO craze of 2016-2017 had undermined some of the credibility of blockchain projects, which meant it was near impossible to license any legitimate IP
  • CryptoKitties served as a proof of concept for future NFT projects
• NBA Top Shot is a hybrid of three things that capture fans attention:
  1. Highlights & social media
  2. Pack opening & the gameplay experience (Top Shot game coming out later this year)
  3. Tangible feeling of owning a piece of history
• Dapper Labs started their venture into pro sports NFTs with the NBA because their leadership and fans are very tech-savvy, which made for easy adoption
• Dapper works with the NBA Players Association for active players' rights, and works with retired player 1-on-1 to secure their rights for future releases
• They take 5% of every transaction, a portion of which goes directly to Dapper Labs and a portion of which gets split between the NBA and NBAPA
• Roham sees Dapper Labs as a platform business that will utilize blockchain transparency to empower developers to build on their infrastructure

Intro

Guest: Rohan Gharegozlou | @rohamg

• Co-Founder & CEO, Dapper Labs (March 2018-Present)

• Website: https://dapperlabs.com

• Roham's Venture Studio, Axiom Zen, founded in 2013, was his first main push into Blockchain-based applications.

  "We always saw crypto or blockchain as more of an application platform than a database or a currency platform." -Roham Gharegozlou

• He worked on the NFT standard in the summer of 2017 and launched the game CryptoKitties in the fall of that year.

• It had immediate traction so he partnered with investors Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures and Chris Dixon of a16z to form Dapper Labs and go after the larger NFT opportunity.

How CryptoKitties led to NBA Top Shot

• The NFT standard is a way to represent assets of the same particular category that are individually unique
• The idea for CryptoKitties arose because they couldn't license IP (logos, characters, players etc.) from major brands as a crypto startup in 2017.
  • The ICO craze had undermined some of the credibility of blockchain projects. So Roham and his team made CryptoKitties as a proof of concept.