Dapper Hires 2 Execs as NFL NFT Marketplace Debuts to $5M in Sales

Dapper Labs has hired a pair of executives to help manage its non-fungible token (NFT) ventures.

Dzmitry Markovich has been brought on as SVP of engineering and Stephanie Lemmerman is the company’s new CFO, the company announced Monday.

Both hires leave traditional tech roles to join Dapper and its rapidly expanding Web 3 operations – Markovich was VP of engineering at Dropbox, Lemmerman was the CFO of Recharge Payments.

“Web 3 is attracting so much talent because the space is innovating much faster than companies like Google, Apple and so on,” Markovich told CoinDesk in an interview. “There are a lot of unknowns still, but people want to be a part of something big.”

The hirings trail the debut week of Dapper’s “NFL All Day” NFT marketplace, a National Football League-licensed counterpart to the company’s crown jewel, NBA Top Shot.

The football marketplace saw over 90,000 transactions totaling $5 million in sales volume from Feb. 22 to Feb. 24, a representative told CoinDesk.

Dapper’s NFL platform is just one of numerous efforts to expand its properties into every corner of the growing sports NFT market. The company also has plans for UFC and cricket marketplaces on its Flow blockchain in the works.

Read more: UFC Joins NBA, NFL in Dapper Labs’ Sports NFT Suite

Dapper’s ambitions are backed by some serious capital, even by NFT standards. The company closed a $250 million funding round at a reported $7.6 billion valuation in September.

“All Day could be a bigger thing than Top Shot at the end of the day. And All Day, from a technological point of view, we’re building a brand-new stack that we will be able to scale,” Markovich told CoinDesk in an interview. “The NFL brand in the United States is huge.”

CORRECTION (Feb. 28, 23:12 UTC): The NFL All Day marketplace went live in closed beta on Feb. 22, not Feb. 23.