NFT mania is the trend that just can’t seem to go out of style. As we hold our breathes to see if they will go the way of fleeting cultural moments like Beanie Babies or Laserdisc, each day sees them setting new sales records and grabbing more splashy headlines across the internet. Some argue they are merely jpeg files that anyone could simply right click and save to their desktop, while others claim they are the units of a global (intergalactic?) revolution.
As I was exploring the space and falling down various Discord rabbit holes, I came across a quirky little project that caught my attention: BALLERZ NFT. Like many pfp (profile pic) project, they featured 8-bit characters in various iterations. In this case, all wearing basketball jerseys and gear. Digging around surfaced precious little information. There was a website, with a high level and vague “roadmap” promising future utility and hinting at a variety of potential developments from some type of basketball arcade game, to real world meetups and parties.
The hype in the project’s Discord server fanned the flames of early members’ imagination. There was the documented fact of several project investors, Mark Cuban and Roham Gharegozlou, as well as rumors that various celebrities such as Jay-Z had already minted their own BALLERZ NFTs. Needless to say, all the talk was intriguing, even if the future was uncertain.
Then there was the steady march and countdown to the pre-sale, for which only qualified “OG BALLERZ” from the early days of the Discord were invited to participate.
Intrigued, and given early access, I minted three BALLERZ and waited for the reveal event several days later. When I signed back into the site on the Gaia marketplace, I was greeted with the following squad:
After the reveal event, the community went nuts. Hackers and coders were pulling meta data of the BALLERZ and creating all sorts of assets, from old school style basketball cards, to digital magazine covers, to 8-bit inspired team logos. All the while, the number of Discord members grew, leading up to the official public sale several days later.
With hype in overdrive, the rest of the 10,000 generative BALLERZ sold out in less than three hours. The admin of the project confirmed that there would never be more minted. This was it. Which only served to drive more FOMO and tweet storms from thirsty would-be BALLERZ looking to grab a player for themselves.
In a few weeks, the public marketplace will official open. There is wild speculation about the floor price from .5 to 20 ETH as die hard holders of the NFTs claim they will never sell. Meanwhile, the community has taken to Twitter campaigns to put the 8-bit ballers everywhere. From NBA player shoes to getting their own sneaker deals for their characters to billboards in Miami and NYC.
There’s no telling what the next chapter will reveal, but for now, the sky is the limit for this league of non-fungible ballers.
