As creators of the Flow blockchain, Dapper Labs has raised a 12 million dollar investment from several investors including several NBA stars. Players like Spencer Dinwiddie and Garrett Temple (Brooklyn Nets), Andre Iguodala (Miami Heat), Javale McGee (LA Lakers) and and Aaron Gordon (Orlando Magic) are part of the investment group.
Not only do these players invest in the Flow blockchain, but their connection to the project also has some career perspective. Collectors can find these players in the digital collectible game NBA Top Shot. The collectible game generated 1.2 million dollars in revenue. even though it's only its beta trial phase.
Dapper Labs will use the investment to develop new projects. They were working on collectibles involving Dr Seuss, the fighting competition UFC and Warner Music Group. “We just realized for this technology to go mainstream, we need to work with the world’s best partners and then build products that everyone’s going to be able to understand and engage with,” said co-founder Roham Gharegozlou to Bloomberg.
The basketball players are pumping their money into the Flow blockchain, and that's not only because of the digital collectibles from NBA Top Shot. “This is a strategic investment for me, because I believe in what Dapper is doing, not just with Top Shot but with the Flow blockchain as well", Spender Dinwiddie told Forbes.
Flow is a proof-of-stake blockchain. This means that nodes hosted based on economic wealth instead of computing power. The Flow network introduces five different nodes, which means the workload will be split between them. Each node is a bit different and they all compliment each other. As a result everybody can help to build the network, ranging from home computers to data centers.
In a traditional blockchain every node stores the account balances, smart contract code etc. Each of the nodes performs all of the work associated with every transaction. Because of this these nodes require strong hardware and do lots of technical work. The Flow blockchain applies decentralized participation, allowing a wide range of participants to commit to a range of technical and financial commitments. This results in five different roles: Collection, Consensus, Execution, Verification, and Observation.
For regular users it will be easy to use Flow. There won't be any transaction fees. As a result this makes breeding Cryptokitties and sending someone in-game assets a lot more user friendly. Aside from Dapper Labs own projects Cryptokitties and NBA Top Shot, there are more games coming to Flow. Among them is Chainmonsters, a Pokémon-inspired online game.
