Is the $2.6 billion valuation reasonable?
This round of investment, the most concerned investment institutions, including various sports stars.
Coatue, a hedge fund, was established in 1999 and headquartered in New York.In the past 20 years, coatue's management scale has leapt from 45 million to 19 billion US dollars. It has long bet on TMT track, and its top 10 companies are all in the field of Internet technology.For Chinese people, cotue's investment in didi travel, hornet's nest, meituan reviews, vipkid, byte skipping, Xicha are also familiar brands.
More importantly, coatue's investment philosophy has always been to invest only in "leading" companies in a certain field.In 2018, coatue took part in investing in bitcontinental, the first mining enterprise in the crypto mining circle.Today, coatue leads this round of financing, which also means that dapper labs is regarded as the first enterprise in NFT field.
The investment institutions are mainly sports stars and entertainment stars. The specific investment list is as follows:
NBA stars: Michael Jordan, Kevin Durant, Andre Iguodala, Kyle Lowry, Spencer Dinwiddie, Andre Drummond, Alex Caruso, Michael Carter Williams, Josh Hart, Udonis Haslem, JaVale McGee, Khris Middleton, domantas sabonis, Klay Thompson, Nikola vucevic
Major League Baseball (MLB) stars: Nolan arena do, Tim Beckham.
NFL players: Thomas Davis, stefon diggs, Dee Ford, Malcom Jenkins, Rodney McLeod, Jordan Matthew, Devin mccourty, Jason mccourty, DK Metcalf, tyrod Taylor, Trent Williams.
Other companies: 93 ventures, Ashton Kutcher, guy Oseary, sound ventures, dreamers, VC, Ag ventures.
Rapper: 2 chainz.
Behind the glitter of the management, some people will ask whether it is reasonable to value dapper labs at $2.6 billion?
My answer is: it's not overvalued.
First of all, the NBA top shot created by dapper labs has completely transformed the traditional fan economy and reestablished ties with fans.
In the past, NBA may charge royalties when selling cards for the first time, but it will not increase the income from the second transaction. however, through top shot, NBA and the players' association can get commission in both the first and second transactions.
In this way, dapper labs will take 5% of the cost of each transaction and distribute the proceeds to the NBA and the NBA.So far, dapper labs has contributed $49 million to the NBA and the players' Association, according to the official website.
More importantly, top shot can not only bring economic value to ordinary fans, but also reflect their loyalty and participation.In the past more than 3 million transactions, 1 million transactions were between $10 and $50, and users were extremely active. In addition, 90% of NFT transactions with a six digit price were not reselled again, but were used for collection.
Secondly, NBA top shot has been completely out of the circle and has gone deep into the world of traditional fans.
Take China as an example, in 2018, the number of Pan fans in China reached 482 million, including 143 million core basketball fans and about 1 billion global basketball fans.Such a huge market is also an important reason to support high valuation.
Finally, the success of "NBA top shot" mode means that other league matches and entertainment activities can also copy its business model.
According to official news, dapper labs has not only announced the establishment of partnership with WNBA and UFC, but also has reached cooperation with Warner Music Group and game developer animoca to continue to build products on flow.In addition, the crypto art market viv3.com already exists on the platform.
"We hope to bring the same magic to other sports leagues and help other entertainment studios and independent creators find their own way in exploring open platforms," roham gharegozlou said in a statement. "NFT has opened up a new profit model that benefits fans more than advertising or sponsorship."
The above three reasons are only around the application layer product "NBA top shot" of dapper labs
Flow supports NFT market development
Now, NFT concept is hot, and it starts to break the circle.
On March 11, the NFT work "everydays: the first 5000 days" by beeple, a famous crypto artist, was sold at Christie's for $69.346250, which refreshed the NFT transaction price.NFT prices, which have set new highs, are impacting the eyes outside the circle.
Jointly released by L'Atelier BNP Paribas and nonfungible.com2020《NFT ReportThe overall size of the NFT market tripled last year, with a total value of more than $250 million. Both companies predict that NFT will be widely adopted in the next few years.
One of the reasons for the market growth is the growing interest of global brands in NFT.Fashion and luxury brands such as Nike, Louis Vuitton and Breitling, as well as sports brands such as NBA and formula 1, have been actively creating NFT based consumer goods and services.
Nadya Ivanova, chief operating officer of L'Atelier BNP Paribas, stressed, "as the boundaries between the virtual world and the physical world become increasingly blurred, we see the rapid growth of online virtual economy, each of which provides a variety of employment, investment and business opportunities.NFT is likely to become an important asset class and the foundation of the virtual economy in the next decade.Investors and brands who want to take advantage of the shift to virtual activities should pay close attention to the NFT market, as it continues to mature and develop. "
Because of the huge market potential, all institutions and many investors choose dapper labs, bet NFT track will become a popular window in the crypto market.
However, the development of NFT is also facing great limitations.
On the one hand, the mass base is still weak.Since 2017, the development time of NFT is limited, and the scope of use is still narrow.According to a survey of 29574 users conducted by crypto.com in December 2020, 47% of respondents have heard of NFT, 63% of them have only a basic understanding of NFT, and 57% of respondents have never used any NFT.
On the other hand, the underlying infrastructure is not perfect.At present, the vast majority of NFT is based on Ethereum.
However, due to the high gas cost and low processing efficiency, NFT has been hindered from entering a broader market.
Dapper labs is also aware of this problem.In 2017, the "cryptocat" fire once blocked the Ethereum network, so the dapper labs team is determined to independently develop a high-performance public chain.In September 2019, dapper labs announced the creation of flow public chain.Flow architecture is designed to make it easier for developers to build consumer friendly applications on the blockchain, including NFT. flow is an open source platform on which anyone can develop.
The big fire "NBA top shot" is developed based on flow. The success of top shot also proves the strength of flow blockchain.
Flow's efficient processing power and low transaction cost are recognized by more developers.According to official information, in the past four weeks, flow ecology has achieved a 20% month on month increase in the number of developers per week. At present, there are more than 1000 developers on flow, with more than 100 development projects. there are more than 1.3 million flow accounts distributed in more than 100 different countries. flow has also been supported by more than 350 verifier nodes,These nodes are operated by companies such as Turner, T-Systems / Deutsche Telekom, Ubisoft, and NBA players such as Spencer Dinwiddie.
"NFT gives people real ownership of games and the digital world for the first time.Developers can also easily build products that allow customers to access their NFT and identity from different products, reducing customer lock-in.On blockchains such as flow, NFT can better re connect to the Internet. "Dieter shirely, chief technology officer, dapper labs, explained.
"Without flow, it is impossible to design a blockchain for games and NFT from scratch, and top shot cannot be implemented."So says a16z, an investment firm at dapper labs.
NBA top shot has opened a new world for consumers of sports, art, music and all entertainment, and flow is the cornerstone of all this.