Swoops post mortem

Swoops was a web3 fantasy basketball company co-founded by the author in fall 2021 and wound down two years later, per the post-mortem. The company raised $3.5M, with David of Alpaca as co-founder and partner, and its digital players, called Swoopsters, sold out their first 1,500-player drop at 0.05 ETH each in 30 minutes in January 2023. The post attributes the wind-down partly to a shrinking market, as crypto prices and NFT volume fell, and to difficult crypto onboarding for mainstream users, with season sales slowing and the same core users of a few hundred participating in each drop.