How NFTs Can Reward Fantasy Gamers

Fantasy gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry that operates across every major sport. Fans have the opportunity to select players, form teams, join leagues, and compete against other users.

It’s a market that is dominated by a handful of large companies. Major leagues contract with sites like ESPN and Yahoo and daily fantasy companies like FanDuel and DraftKings.

Any billion-dollar industry where user acquisition is at a premium is ripe for innovation. Disruption is exactly what Cydisys had in mind when they partnered with Kaleido to build the blockchain-backed play-to-earn game AnteFame around Formula 1.

Bringing Fans and Athletes Closer

AnteFame allows users to build teams of F1 drivers and compete to be the best manager, similar to other fantasy platforms. But blockchain technology changes the way users are rewarded.

AnteFame results are indexed week-to-week and based on a user’s results they can earn collectibles in the form of NFTs.

These non-fungible tokens represent real life drivers in F1 through lower leagues like Karting. In theory, a user could earn or buy a young Karting driver and share in the value created by that NFT if that driver climbs the world rankings.

Based on iRacing, users can also become drivers and compete in virtual races. Over the course of their virtual career, if a player becomes a great driver, they can mint an NFT of themselves to keep or sell.

“In the game a user can become a player,” said Fred Meyer, Director of Cydisys. “This is very different from a lot of other platforms. People can be a manager or create their own NFT and be on the team. It makes it much more personal”

In the world of fantasy football, a user can’t impact the performance of their roster. AnteFame changes this—allowing users a way into the action.

Incentivizing Athlete Participation

Think about the fantasy landscape today: users choose one of a handful of large brands to share their information with in order to win prizes. But in large part, the value of fantasy games lives with these large companies.

While Antefame allows users to get in on the action, it also rewards athletes who participate in the game. This represents a new model for how athletes can monetize their likenesses.

“With AnteFame, we’re asking drivers to feed us unique photos that we mint as an NFT,” said Fred Meyer. “These unique photos that the driver supplies become collectibles and the driver retains ownership of the asset.”

Drivers can mint candid photos as NFTs and sell those in the game. The drivers keep 75% of every NFT sold, offering the athlete much more control over how their likeness is used in the game.

The Future of Fantasy Gaming

Some of the biggest problems using blockchain relate to creating permissions and sharing user data. Most people don’t want to go through the (cumbersome) process of setting up a wallet or using crypto to pay fees. Cydisys also found gas fees on other platforms were too expensive.

Kaleido allowed them the freedom to build without the burdens of a complicated client-side wallet and with zero gas fees.  

“Kaleido made it easier for AnteFame to manage both user and driver keys,” said Nick Gaski, Solution Architect at Kaleido. “One of the real problems with getting the average user into a web3 experience is that it’s a pain to download and use these wallets. We were able to build all that into the background of the architecture with simple APIs and keep the application’s focus entirely on the gaming experience.”

“Moreover, a gas-free experience means that there are no additional pass-through costs to the end users.  This adds simplicity to the overall experience and offers greater flexibility when considering the lifecycle of these assets downstream.”

AnteFame, powered by Kaleido, represents a new future for web3 gaming where users have more power to affect outcomes and athletes share in the profit of their performance. It’s a frictionless, decentralized model that has implications far beyond Formula 1. Just imagine the implications for professional and collegiate athletes in other leagues as they look for new ways to monetize their talent—and this is exactly what AnteFame intends to do. If you are a league interested in changing the way you game, Kaleido and AnteFame can help you get there. Our NFT platform makes it easier than ever for businesses to create NFTs at scale, gas free.

If you're interested in learning more, start with this tutorial on how to mint an NFT using the Kaleido platform.