NBA Top Shot has exploded in popularity in recent months, with hundreds of thousands of people flocking to the site every time a new pack is published.
The growth is both exciting and worrying for Top Shot, as they have struggled to keep up with their rapid expansion due to the fact that they are still a beta product working out kinks and issues in real-time. When hundreds of thousands of accounts are attempting to obtain a pack, the problems will be amplified, and tensions will intensify.
The Top Shot Marketplace has been down since the Rising Stars pack was released over the weekend as they try to find out how to meet the increased demand. Top Shot’s infrastructure has been strained to breaking point by the number of goods being purchased and sold, and as they work to grow to satisfy demand, they’ve introduced a series of additional restrictions that will be imposed on the Marketplace to relieve the burden on their system as they gradually reopen.
Under the new rules, collectors will only be able to buy one Moment every two hours. They can try to buy as many as they want, but after they’ve purchased one, they’ll be unable to buy any more for another two hours. Collectors will also be limited to creating one new “for sale” listing every two hours, in order to reduce the load on their servers. Finally, once sales begin, collectors will be able to delist a Moment every 10 minutes — for the time being, the Marketplace has been opened to allow for unrestricted delisting before sales resume. They also won’t let anyone create new accounts, and gifting will be disabled for an indefinite period of time.
All of this means that once the Marketplace reopens, the frenetic speed of Top Shot buying and selling will slow considerably. On Monday, Dapper Labs stated that the restrictions would be lifted in the future, but did not include a timeline, only stating that they “expect to scale down these constraints over time as we develop our infrastructure.” The reported reasons for the changes are to allow them to continue fighting bots while also allowing them to remain open for longer periods of time.
It also stands to reason that, while these restrictions will eventually be lifted, they will likely remain in place to some extent, as they have stated that they do not want to be used as an investment tool and only want to be used for collecting, and restricting the amount of frenetic trading that can occur is one way to counteract this.
