This year has been an undeniably challenging one for everyone around the world and our hearts go out to them all. Over at Flow, this has given us pause to reflect on all that we have to be grateful for. Thank you to our incredible community for being here with us and making the journey this year so memorable. Here is a year in review of all we have been able to accomplish together.
This year alone, we’ve announced a roster of fantastic ecosystem partners including global IPs like UFC, Dr. Seuss, Turner Sports, Animoca Brands and prominent players like Binance, Circle, OpenSea, Blockparty, Bitkub, Sumo Digital, Finoa, Bison Trails, Figment Networks, P2P Validators and Genies. These are just some of the names amongst many others, special thanks to all of our partners.
One partnership that has stirred much excitement is our collaboration with Genies. Genies is an established avatar company bringing celebrities closer to their fan bases with custom avatars and exclusive digital collectibles (soon to be NFTs), making a collaboration with Flow a perfect match. They’ve already had amazing celebrity collaborations including Shawn Mendes, J.Lo, Offset, Rihanna, DJ Khaled, Justin Bieber, Cardi B and more.
Learn more about Genies collaboration here.
There couldn’t have been a better way to end the year. As of yesterday, Flow has reached another major milestone with the rollout of staking on mainnet and the smooth first epoch reward payout to all participants. Nearly 12,000 community members from 100+ countries actively participated in securing the network via staking, making Flow one of the most diverse blockchain networks.
This is also the first time liquid FLOW is available to the broader ecosystem, setting the foundation for a myriad of new use-cases. We are all deeply excited about the near future. FLOW holders can use FLOW to collect jaw-dropping plays on NBA Top Shot today and will soon be able to use it on Viv3 marketplace, including Chainmonsters, among others.
There is no denial we encountered many Flow skeptics even in early 2020, but everyone’s perceptions changed when they witnessed the Flow community’s overwhelming enthusiasm during the Flow token sale on CoinList.
Flow was by far the most widely distributed sale in CoinList’s history. With almost 12,000 participants committed, we nearly 3xed CoinList’s previous record for the largest number of participants. The community token offering raised $18M in total, with participants from 100+ countries.
“Substance and content over style and hype any day” Derwin L. Gray
Hype is the collective optimism that helps us push forward even during the darkest hours, but substance is what will cement our position as leader. This past June, in collaboration with the NBA, NBA Top Shot launched its early (alpha) access to a small subset of initial users and achieved over $1M+ in pack sales within just a few weeks.
By October, NBA Top Shot launched into live beta with a revolutionary new experience in which jaw-dropping plays and unforgettable highlights become collectibles that you can own forever. Since its launch less than half a year ago, Top Shot has attracted 4,000 collectors who spent over $6M in aggregate and processed half a million Flow transactions. Did we mention a Top Shot-powered mobile game coming in 2021?
And last but not least, Top Shot also won the Most Innovative App award from the Samsung Galaxy Store! Now is the perfect time to get started, with a fresh endorsement from Miami Heat star Tyler Herro.
On the developer community front, the year started with the launch of Flow Playground, your sandbox to work through the fundamentals of developing smart contracts directly on your browser: learning about FT/NFT standards, unlocking new collectibles experience via resources, building your own marketplace, and more, all on Flow. For many of you, this might be the first place where you got to try out Cadence, the resource-oriented programming language native to Flow. During the spring, we also launched the Cadence Cup, a series of challenges on Flow Playground in a race to win the grand prize.
If you are interested in learning more, don’t forget to take a look at our rich documentation portal. You can also set up your local environment by leveraging Flow CLI & Emulator or integrate one of our SDKs (Go, Javascript) to build out your next blockbuster app on Flow!
In the summer, we launched the first cohort of Open World Builders. This 8-week blockchain bootcamp brought on some unique projects and excellent community engagement with over 400 applicants and 15 final project submissions. Each week hosted unique workshops and amazing guests such as NBA star Spencer Dinwiddie and renowned investor Fred Wilson.
We also launched the first Open World Summit. A two-day global interactive event with a single focus on onboarding the first billion consumers to crypto. The event brought together a plethora of blockchain leaders in the industry to share with you the latest and greatest in the space, featuring 10+ panels, 45+ speakers across 5 countries.
If you’re excited about Flow, we’d love you to share the this blog and help grow the community globally.
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