Flowty Newsletter: Edition 2
News and Updates for NBA Top Shot, Own The Moment, Flow Hackathon, Flow Nexus News Hub, and more.
Welcome to the second edition of the Flowty Newsletter! Thanks so much for signing up to our email list, and we're proud to bring you Edition 1 in a variety of formats. This post gives you a glimpse of everything the newsletter contains, but be sure to check it out IN FULL:
Via Interactive Viewing | Downloadable PDF | Audio Recording
In this issue, we're excited to bring you information on:
NBA Top Shot Set Chasers
Return of The Owner’s Club from OTM
Flowty Feature Updates
Rogue Studios’ Flow Game Teaser
NBA Top Shot Captains Voices
...and plenty more. Thanks, as always, for being a Flowty user and newsletter subscriber! Your support and feedback helps us constantly improve and work towards a better user experience!
The TL;DR
UFC’s Matt Frevola took over the UFC Strike Twitter account to live tweet the UFC 291 card.
Own The Moment announced the return of The Owner’s Club for the 2023 NFL season.
NBA Top Shot whale and social media personality Libruary announced the launch of Flow Nexus.
Rogues Studio teased an upcoming game on Flow, Heroes of the Flow.
Emerald City announced their Snippets tool, an easy way to find needed code while developing on Flow.
Metaverse Football (MFL) celebrated the Women’s World Cup with an extensive campaign of giveaways and more.
NBA Top Shot released Set Chasers and Team Collection page updates.
July 15 was the first day that NBA Top Shot moments were eligible to be unlocked (The Unlockening) and, as of now, the impact appears to be relatively muted.
Zeedz Gaming App successfully raised a seed round and is targeting October 5th, 2023 as a launch date for the Zeedz App.
NFL All Day sold out 20,000 Mini packs and launched Training Camp Playbooks.
Registration opened for Driverz Racing League 2.0 with a deadline of August 2nd.
Evaluate.xyz teamed up with Steady Breaks for a 15 collector break livestream.
Seussibles released paid and free packs as part of a Grinchmas in July Challenge.
Flowty Updates
We continue to work very hard on UX improvements and be responsive to user feature requests! The last few weeks, similar to the last month or so has been filled with some small but effective UI and UX updates, as large development work is performed behind the scenes. We love how much activity we’ve seen from La Liga Golazos both on social media as well as on Flowty, so we’ve revamped the Golazos NFT cards to better display NFT traits.
In an effort to bring the community closer together, we’ve also added the capability for users to link their Twitter…err… their X accounts to their Flowty profiles. Simply head to Settings and connect your account! We also believe this will make it easier for fellow collectors to reach out for offers, negotiations, and sales inquiries.
A final update we’ve installed recently is NFT thumbnail pictures on the Activity page for easier reference and viewing. This update was a popular community request, and we’re always all ears on user feedback.
On the storefront, we’ve seen a large uptick in NFT-Backed Loans and continue to encourage users and prospective users to take a look at all our Loans tutorials and reference material.
Finally, the LeBron sales continue to heat up, as Flowty has now seen six 5-figure purchases in the last two months.
Recent Updates:
La Liga Golazos Improvements: NFT cards for La Liga Golazos have been updated to include more trait information.
Twitter Account Linking: Users can now link their Twitter/X accounts to their Flowty profile in the Settings page.
Activity Thumbnails: Thumbnails of NFTs were added to the Activity page for easier viewing.
For more information on recent updates, check out the full newsletter.
Around the Blockchain
Headlines in the Flow Ecosystem
Each week, we bring you a curated selection of recent developments and noteworthy events surrounding the Flow blockchain and its ecosystem. From NFT drops to events, blockchain news, feature updates, project launches, and more. Don’t miss a beat and just go with the Flow.
Flovatar pressed pause on their Dust Odyssey visual podcast but will return with new episodes starting August 11th. They are currently at 10 episodes and are holding contests for background illustrations.
With signature brands such as Barbie and Hot Wheels arriving on the Flow Blockchain, the Flow team toured Mattel and got a peek behind-the-scenes on some secret items.
DappRadar’s Q2 Flow Report showed encouraging stats for the Flow Blockchain: DeFi lending surged 100%, Liquid Staking increased 12%, and Flow had 13,169 daily unique active wallets in Q2.
Flow Hackathon Season 2 wrapped up, with judging currently in progress. There were 187 competing projects, with a prize pool of $500,000 to be distributed in $FLOW. See PAGE 6 for a Q&A with one of its participants, Derp3x.
The Blurbs
We’re keeping a close eye on these updates, projects, and news items.
NBA Top Shot Releases Team Collection Page & Set Page Updates
In yet another step forward during the Series 4 calendar, NBA Top Shot released extensive UI and UX updates to their desktop and mobile site, most notably the overhaul of the Set pages and updates to the Team Collection pages.
On the set pages, collectors can see their progress to completing a set, current completions & completion-rate, and the number of collectors deemed to be “Chasers” (collectors who possess at least 70% of the Moments from a set), and missing moments. The Team Progress pages received a similar organizational overhaul, and both have been well received overall by the community.
OTM Announces Return of The Owner’s Club for 2023 NFL Season
Own The Moment, fresh off a fantastic Jolly July, announced that The Owner’s Club (TOC) fantasy football will return for the 2023 NFL season after a hiatus during the 2022 season. OTM also announced that the game will be run off-chain and assets will simply be digital cards on the OTM website; the inaugural OTM season took place on the Polygon blockchain.
Per the Own The Moment website:
“If you are a holder of OG cards, the NFTs have been converted to the new format and you can see them in your collection on the TOC website. These cards will be eligible for our weekly OGs contest all season long…
There are a few other fun additions to the 2023 game including Rare Cards, Starter Packs, and our own in-game Marketplace on the OTM website.
Packs will cost $99 and contain 5 cards, 4 Base Tier and 1 Rare Tier. Packs contain one of each position (QB, RB, WR, TE, DST). They will be available for sale in just a few short weeks!”
Libruary Launches Flow Nexus News Hub
NBA Top Shot whale and thought leader Libruary announced the launch of Flow Nexus, billed not just as an easy way to keep up with Flow project news, but also as a central location to create on-chain comments for the community. Currently, NBA Top Shot, NFL All Day, UFC Strike, and La Liga Golazos are supported on the platform.
Rogue Studios Announces “Heroes of the Flow” Game on Flow
Hackathon-winning team Rogue Studios announced their arrival on the Flow Blockchain by teasing their upcoming “Heroes of the Flow” mobile autobattler game. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, Heroes is the second game in World of Rogues.
For more collection and project updates, check out the full newsletter.
This Week’s Features
Behind the Dev: Hackathon Q&A with Derp
Ben Kukainis, Flowty.io
The following is a Q&A session with Hackathon-participant @Derp3x. You can follow him on Twitter/X at @Derp3x or in Discord at Derp3x.
Before we get into Hackathon and both your Flovatar & Sportvatar projects, can you tell us a little bit about your activity on and involvement in the Flow ecosystem?
Generally speaking, I’m just another NFT collector having fun in the Flow ecosystem. I’ve been interested in Flow for a few years, and dabbled in a few different projects, but for the past year or so I have been a Flovatar maximalist. Luca and team do great work!
Do you invest time into/build tools for any other blockchain? If yes, can you talk about how Flow compares to others? If no, can you explain why you focus on Flow specifically?
I contributed to a Bytecoin fork called TurtleCoin (RIP) some back in 2018, but that’s my only other software development-related blockchain experience. For that and Flow though everything I’ve built has been web and mobile-focused because those are the technologies that I am comfortable with at my day job. So while I haven’t become proficient enough in any chain’s native language to be able to compare them, Cadence does look very approachable, and eventually I’d like to train via Emerald Academy’s courses.
Now let’s get into your Hackathon project. You first created flov.dev for market price estimates on Flovatar, but your Hackathon project was something similar for the Sportvatars collection. Can you explain What the project exactly is?
It’s a responsive web app for fans and collectors to further gamify and enhance the Sportvatar user experience. There’s an extended rarity scoring system that complements the native Sportvatar abilities stats by also giving collectors a detailed look at the rarity of the traits and Sportbits they’ve chosen for their Sportvatars.
The site also organizes and surfaces information from the Sportvatar API and Flow Blockchain about individual Sportvatars and Sportvatar collections that collectors may not otherwise have access to. Some of this information is shown in the form of a custom highlights system on an individual Sportvatar’s profile page, aggregate collection scoring, filtering the entire Sportvatar population by Sportbit, a detailed statistics section, and more.
It also includes some fun and socially “sticky” features like a famous look-a-like gallery and metadata that will display a current image of the actual Sportvatar + its native abilities score when sharing its profile page URL on social media.
Was this a solo project or did you build with someone else?
This is a solo project.
Why did you decide to build this tool?
My primary motivations are a happy obligatory duty to the Flovatar community and a desire to honor Luca’s team and their awesome work. Ever since Sportvatar was announced the site had been in the back of my mind. I wasn’t in a hurry since the official public Sportvatar launch isn’t until sometime in September, at the earliest, but then Flow Hackathon Season 2 came along and the possible prize incentive + tight timeline made it a priority for me to get started on the planning and development.
Any issues you ran into?
I ran into a few issues with the official Sportvatar data and image APIs, with which Luca promptly assisted.
I am still getting to know Cadence and the Flow CLI, so I am not very efficient with those tools yet. Between the Flow Discord (shout out to Bluesign & Max Starka!) and the Flow CLI documentation I was able to find what I needed.
I was working full-time remotely while traveling with my family for most of the Hackathon, so that was challenging on a personal level, but it all worked out.
Another challenge was having the final week of the hackathon coincide with Flovatar’s DUST token launch. That was a major distraction for me, but it was so much fun!
How this differed, if at all, from the Flovatar flov.dev project?
The concept is very similar because Sportvatar is so similar to Flovatar, for now, but I worked hard to make the execution unique. Per the Hackathon rules, I started the codebase from scratch and had to architect it a bit differently, compared to flov.dev, since the code is required to be in a public repository.
Luca has hinted at some future plans for Sportvatar that will really set it apart from Flovatar, so it will be fun to learn more about what they have in store and grow the sport.vatar.dev site alongside the official brand.
For us non-devs, something like the Hackathon can be a bit intimidating to follow and keep up with. How was your experience in the Hackathon?
I coded projects in Seasons 1 & 2 and it has been a fun and rewarding experience for both, but I definitely understand how it could be intimidating. For non-devs I’d recommend simply waiting for the awards ceremony to see all of the great work that was done during the Hackathon.
Was there any specific project during Hackathon that stood out to you? Why?
For sure! AI is a hot topic right now, and Wondermon demonstrated prompt-guided NFTs where you can tell/ask a project what you want to accomplish (versus fumbling around trying to figure things out on your own). Let’s be honest, the UX of NFTs still isn’t all that friendly, even on Flow, so I think that this has a lot of potential.
Before we go, is there anything you hope to see in the near-mid future from Flow Blockchain, whether it’s tools, collections, blockchain developments, etc?
For tooling, I am looking forward to continued improvements to the Flow CLI and I want to experiment and learn more about the Vanilla JS implementation specifically. And I am always looking forward to the latest and greatest releases from Emerald / Jacob & 33Labs / Lanford.
Speculatively, I am keeping an eye on the new Tokenomics Working Group.
Flowty Tips
We so appreciate everyone’s support for the Flowty Newsletter, and believe Edition 1 was a major success! Moving forward, this Monthly Publication will be released during the first week of every month, with our shorter Mid-Month Check-In to premiere mid-August.
We hope you enjoy the new section, Captain’s Corner, as we continue to bring the voices of Flow to the masses. Feel free to reach out with any ideas and we will take them into consideration!
Click the “Offers” Tab in your Profile to see both Offers Received and Made.
Listing in Dapper FLOW will show you the exact conversion rate to Dapper Balance.
You can search for NBA Top Shot #1 Serials, Jersey Serials, and Perfect Serials using the dropdown Filters.
Thanks for reading this week's Flowty Newsletter! It's our goal to provide the most accurate, up-to-date, and relevant information across the blockchain, not just on our website, Flowty.io. We always welcome valuable insight and contributions from the community. To inquire about advertisements, guest content, and topic or news requests, please email newsletter.admin@flowty.io. Before you go, be sure to claim your FLOAT NFT for Edition 1! (PASSCODE: DERP2)
Financial Disclosure:
The content in this edition of Flowty Newsletter--including guest articles, highlights, updates, and sponsored content--is not to be construed as financial advice. Please use caution and oeprate within a budget that suits you when transacting on Flowty.io or anywhere else on the Flow blockchain, including purchasing, offering, renting, and loaning or borrowing. Flowty.io does not provide financial advice or recommendations.
Copyright Flowty.io 2023