Dapper Labs is the creator CryptoKitties, FLOW and NBA Top Shot
NFTs are penetrating deeper into the economy and the entertainment industry. And one of the conductors of this technology in the “big world” is Dapper Labs, which promotes its own blockchain and cryptocurrency Flow, NFT marketplace and P2E games. Today, the studio is included in the TOP 50 most innovative companies in the world and is the world’s first entertainment company operating on the blockchain.
Dapper Labs was the first company to bring truly global brands and corporations into the NFT space. Since 2018 Dapper Labs has entered into partnerships with giants such as Warner Music, CNN, Samsung, Dreamworks, Reddit, Coinbase, Zynga, AngelList and Ubisoft, as well as sports associations NBA, NFL, UFC.
Read more about the history of the company and its successful projects in our article.
History of creation Dapper Labs
Team Dapper Labs leads Roham Garegozlow, Dieter Shirley and Mikael Naayem. Back in 2012, after graduating from Stanford University the Iranian Roham Garegozlow founded Axiom Zen for developing various applications. In 2013, he meets Dieter Shirley, who at that time worked at Apple and sought to get his first bitcoin on his home computer. So, the first thoughts appeared to work in the field of blockchain. Further, the partners attracted a former classmate Mikael Naayem, who had just sold his startup to the future giant of the gaming industry Animoca Brands.
So, since 2014 Axiom Zen has started its journey. And in 2018 from the Axiom incubator Zen owners spin off studio Dapper Labs.
Social activity
- Twitter – 132К followers
- Instagram – 24К subscribers
- Own website
What is famous Dapper Labs?
Today Dapper Labs is a studio in Vancouver with about 200 employees. It gained independence after the world’s first blockchain game CryptoKitties became famous at the end of 2017. Then it made a splash in the crypto market.
After her, the team did not stop and continued to develop different areas of the blockchain and crypto market. We boldly attribute to their merits:
- the most successful sports NFT marketplace NBA Top Shot,
- promising sports marketplaces NFL All Day, UFCStrike, LaLiGa,
- own blockchain and FLOW cryptocurrency, which is in the TOP of the best NFT coins for investment according to NFTMetria,
- NFT platform for trading tokens Viv3,
- Decentralized crypto wallet Dapper Wallets to store your NFTs,
- DAO.
In addition to the sensational projects, the company managed to present a number of projects outside the blockchain:
- ZenHub is a GitHub team collaboration solution;
- Timeline – iOS apps of the month;
- Toby – Chrome extension of the year, which allowed you to streamline your work with the browser.
Today among those who invest in Dapper Labs and helps her promote: Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase, NBA. Team Roham collaborates with UFC, Warner Music and other representatives of the entertainment industry, creating digital collections for them.
We will describe all the successes in detail below.
Best Dapper Labs projects
As we said earlier, the studio is developing very rapidly and is capturing more and more shares of the blockchain market from different angles. Let’s take a look at the success story of Dapper Labs in chronological order using their projects as an example.
CryptoKitties
NFT is not only about art. One of the popular areas for the implementation of this technology is video games, or GameFi. In the form of a token, it is convenient to issue digital items that have value in a particular game, these can be animals, artifacts, spaceships, etc. Of course, trade remains the main element of the new mechanics.
An important stage in the history of GameFi was marked by CryptoKitties, the first project using NFT, which swept the crypto market in the fall of 2017. The game about breeding cute digital animals quickly attracted tens of thousands of users, and one NFT pet could pay up to $150 000, which at that time was an impressive amount.
CryptoKitties ran on the blockchain Ethereum, and at the peak of its popularity, game-related transactions exceeded 10% of the total transfers of the entire network. Although after the initial hype, the game quickly lost popularity and was almost forgotten. But professional investors paid attention to the CryptoKitties developer. a16z and USV funds for the first time invested $12 million in a startup.
Also, Axiom Zen contributed to the development of the new ERC721 standard for blockchain tokens Ethereum, which is widely used to issue non-fungible tokens to this day.
Own blockchain FLOW
In 2019, the NFT space faced a technological challenge. The experience of CryptoKitties has shown that Ethereum is a poorly scalable blockchain. Even a relatively small number of actions that players performed heavily loaded the network. This led to slow application performance and high transfer fees.
Develop games designed for a large number of users, all or almost all of whose actions would be reflected in the blockchain Ethereum was simply impossible. Then in 2020 at Dapper Labs decided to create their own blockchain – Flow.
The main advantage of Flow is the ability to quickly process a large number of transactions in user applications. For example, in the same online games. To do this, in Flow, in particular, there are different types of nodes that are responsible for different tasks. Some nodes are only focused on achieving network consensus, while others only process transactions.
By the way, in September 2021, Dapper Labs entered into an agreement with Google, and now the Flow nodes are hosted in the Google Cloud infrastructure.
Blockchain allows the use of NFTs, which leads to an in-game economy that is not limited to a specific game. Users become the owners of characters, items and other achievements in the game and can freely transfer them in the form of tokens to their wallets and even other applications (at least in theory). And the high scalability of Flow allows you to develop complex and interesting products.
Own cryptocurrency Flow
Flow token is the internal currency for the Flow system, necessary for the operation of the network and all applications on it. Flow is designed as a payment method as well as a long-term reserve asset for the entire Flow economy. The token is used by validators, developers and users to participate in the FLOW network and receive rewards. It is also used to pay for and participate in the future governance of the protocol. You can read more about this cryptocurrency in our article on the best NFT coins for investment.
You can buy NFT on your own platforms for dollars or ETH, as well as for native blockchain coins Flow. Today, this cryptocurrency has become the key to entering the Flowverse ecosystem, which has over 150 different projects. The larger the volume of transactions in them, the more actively the Flow coin is used and the higher it is valued.
Marketplace NBA Top Shot
In October 2020 Dapper Labs released their most famous project, the platform NBA Top Shot on the blockchain Flow. On it, the NBA basketball association issues NFT collections of thousands of tokens, which contain video clips of past NBA basketball games.
Each NFT is licensed by the NBA and has a different value, depending on what is shown in the video. For example, several tokens from videos of LeBron James slam dunks displayed on the NBA Top Shot in May 2021, received legendary status and cost more than two hundred thousand dollars apiece.
Betting on basketball fans is bearing fruit. So, in October 2021, the trading volume on the platform jumped by 460% after the release of the new Run NFT collection. it Back 05-06 containing highlights from the 2005-2006 season.
Marketplace NFL All day
After the resounding success of the NBA Top Shot in February 2022, the company announced the creation of a similar American football platform in partnership with the National Football League. On the marketplace All Day you can buy historical football moments. As the developers themselves write, to date, more than 180,000 transactions have been made on the platform, and the sales volume has exceeded $15 million.
Marketplace UFCStrike
Dapper Labs went further and created another specialized marketplace on their blockchain Flow is in partnership with the UFC. Here you can buy any historical moment from the best UFC mixed martial arts fights. All moments are also licensed. According to the developers, more than 120 thousand transactions have already been made on the site.
Marketplace LaLiGa
The studio is pushing the theme of sports fans as much as possible and recently announced a new platform, LaLiGa. The developers act in partnership with the official the highest professional football league in Spain. All NFTs will be historical football moments featuring world-famous teams such as Real Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla, Athletic Bilbao and more.
NFT marketplace Viv3
Another notable project from Dapper Labs on blockchain Flow is the Viv3 platform where artists, musicians, companies and even sports teams release their collections of unique tokens. A unique feature of the marketplace is the free minting of NFTs through the power of the blockchain Flow. The seller at the sale receives a fixed amount of 87.5% of the cost. But the project is at the stage of beta – testing. We believe that it is not yet ready for full-scale use and the status of a full-fledged marketplace.
Future Dapper Labs
Now about prospects.
Financial position of Dapper Labs is more than confident. Since its founding, it has held several investment rounds. And in 2021, their size was already in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
So, in March 2021, the company raised $305 million from a group of private investors and funds, including Venrock, Dreamers VC, 2 Chainz and Andreessen Horowitz. In September Dapper Labs received funding for another $250 million, while the startup was valued at $7.6 billion.
The total investment in the company is over $607 million. Many Dapper Labs investors are major holders of Flow coins. And partnerships with large companies guarantee a stable cash flow.
Opinion of the NFTMetria team
Back in 2017 Dapper Labs launched the ERC721 standard and the world’s first blockchain game, CryptoKitties. At a time when blockchain technology was only used for homogeneous tokens, this series of Dapper Labs innovations was like a nuclear bomb that shook every industry player.
Other studio projects were launched similarly. If we look at the entire history of the development of Dapper Labs, then we will understand that each new project of theirs beats the records of the previous one. With such a rich portfolio, the company is strategically focused on the development of Web3, and today there are simply no serious competitors for this giant.
