During the past few months, the NFT market has been busy in the same way a stereotypical real-world market on a Saturday morning would be. Stalls bursting with the produce of different sizes, colors, and shapes, owners calling out the names of their merchandise to attract buyers’ attention, con artists planning their tricks: the analogy can go pretty far. In all this turmoil, investors have started to get a bit confused, journalists － a bit tired, while the NFT projects keep facing keen competition.

All I want for #Christmas is ONE DAY without a random #NFT pitch about an artist/musician/influencer I’ve never heard partnering with a random platform that launched 2 days ago…

Day X arrived for us on November 4th. We were about to launch the first NFT collection, which would connect five legendary athletes with their fans using brand-new cutting-edge technologies. Ten thousand non-fungible tokens, depicting memorable moments in each athletes' career, got sold out in 9 minutes, gathering $5 million dollars in total. Here’s the honest story of the drop: from the initial concept to issues the team encountered to the solutions we found.

At the Heart of Sports

We founded our platform in 2021 － out of urgency, curiosity, and passion. First, many athletes lost contact with their fans during the COVID-19 lockdown, so we aimed to help them reconnect in the post-pandemic space. Second, we wanted to take on the new opportunities for engaging the audience NFT, and fan tokens offer. Who would have thought, even ten years ago, that fans would be able to help write their heroes’ stories? And lastly, sports is where our passion and expertise meet － so we built a platform for true fans to create an atmosphere of real fanship with all attention to detail.

What exactly, though, is it made of? At the heart of sports lie the memories of decisive moments. Hits, misses, victories, defeats evoke strong emotions. Take the golden goal scored by David Trezeguet to win France the European Championship Final in 2000: all the euphoria and excitement if you were French and the absolute agony if you were Italian. So this is how we came up with the idea of honoring legends of football, boxing, rugby, athletics, and MMA － and the most memorable moments of their careers.

Going Legendary

The next step was to reach out to the athletes or their representatives and seal the deal. Five well-known and loved sports stars, both those still with us and sadly departed, made our list: namely, ex England and Manchester United star Wayne Rooney, ex-UFC champion, sports analyst and commentator Mike Bisping, world-renowned New Zealand rugby superstar Jonah Lomu, international hockey star Alexander Ovechkin, and the boxing legend Muhammad Ali.

With NFTs, quality visuals are key. After signing our heroes, we’ve put a lot of thought into defining the style and concept to make them appeal both to the athletes and their fans. Dosbrak, a renowned digital artist who had worked with a number of sports legends such as Mike Tyson and Connor McGregor, was set with the task of creating the artworks.

However, having a fantastic piece of artwork isn't enough. We’d have to bring on unique perks for our NFT holders. Those included access to an exclusive 'Legends Club' where fans could chat with Blockasset athletes, take part in their AMAs, and compete against them in fantasy sports leagues, discounts on our marketplace, priority access to upcoming P2E games, and 'on this day' real-world rewards.

And, of course, every user would get to showcase their collection in a virtual sticker book on our platform: a nice nostalgic throwback to the analog sticker books of our childhood.

The Drop

When the date of the ‘Legends’ presentation was scheduled, we set out to find a venue fitting the collection's caliber. To boost the exposure, we sent out invitations to journalists who might be interested in covering the event, while the legendary athletes mentioned the collection on their social media.

The official drop took place on the 4th of November 2021 in Times Square, New York, where the artworks featuring the five legends lit the city up from one of the Countdown screens.

Darren Till and Mike Bisping presented the collection and the concept behind it; BT Sports and The Mac Life covered the event. It was a total success: the collection sold out in 9 minutes, with all 10,000 NFTs being taken at Raydium Drop Zone, the NFT exchange that hosted the drop, breaking yet another Solana sales record.

When Things Go Wrong, Do Right

We have chosen the Solana network for several reasons: it’s a fast, low-fee, highly decentralized, and scalable blockchain that holds a lot of promise for NFT projects. However, there are drawbacks, one of which is that the network has only gained traction recently. Earlier this year, some projects like Sollamas and Degenerate Ape Academy encountered certain problems with the mint － and as much as the developers try to learn from their mistakes, some launches can still go unstable.

Soon after the start of the mint, we realised we had an issue. The ‘Legends’ were not minting randomly: for one, Lomus did not shuffle properly. We immediately pulled the mint page and tried to do our best to keep users notified of the issue via our official Twitter account. It was the right thing to do: during the two days it took us to bring randomization back, we’ve received enormous support from our community.

As a thank-you, we held giveaways for two all-expenses-paid trips to New York City for ‘Legends’ NFT holders, one of which would see their Legends NFTs up in lights in Times Square, marking the biggest giveaway in Solana’s history so far. With luxury trips and prizes for each athlete to come, including a trip to New Zealand for Jonah Lomu fans, a trip to watch a heavyweight world title boxing match for Ali fans, a Wayne Rooney testimonial watch/meet & greet, as well as all-expenses-paid trips to Vegas for Bisping fans and flights to Washington to meet Ovi, we plan to reward holders so much more all before the end of the year.

As our subscriber @Fifareum pointed out:

We trust you. Difficulties create commitment.

And we believe it is true. Sometimes things go wrong, but this is part of the journey. With the ‘Legends’ minted and lessons learned, we’re off to new heights and new mints.