What’s a better way than combining the world’s most popular sports with Web2’s most socialized aspects to introduce new users to Web3 through gaming? Association football, or soccer, boasts the largest fan base among sports enthusiasts, with over 3.5 billion estimated people rooting for their favorite teams. Built mainly for football fans, the fantasy sports industry, a vast network of virtual sports leagues where users can create their own teams, has also grown to become a $25 billion global market.

Mixing fantasy football with blockchain features like nonfungible token (NFT) cards could create an ideal entry point to Web3 for the masses. However, current platforms present complex mechanics for newcomers, and most of them lack in-platform user interaction —a big loss considering the social aspect of fantasy football.

Soccer superstars as collectible cards

Fanton has built a fantasy football game that is integrated into Telegram to benefit from the instant messenger service’s 800 million-strong user base. It features collectible cards of top football players that earn points according to their real-life performances. These cards are issued on the blockchain as NFTs and can be easily traded among players.

The game benefits from Telegram’s recent integration with The Open Network (TON) blockchain, which enables the use of a noncustodial wallet directly from the Telegram app. Users can create a virtual football team with their cards of players, and earn points for their players’ actions in the real world.

The teams are made of five players: a goalkeeper, a defender, a midfielder, a forward and a substitute player. These players earn points based on their performances in their real-life football matches. Points are awarded for various actions, such as goals, assists and saves of goal chances by the goalkeeper. The combined score of the points equals the team score.

Tournaments are organized based on match days of real football leagues, including the English Premier League, Spanish LaLiga, German Bundesliga, Italian Serie A and the French Ligue 1. Players can partake in a special championship consisting of the most important matches from the five European leagues, the Brazilian Championship and the UEFA Champions League, the world’s most prestigious championship.

Users can join these tournaments by paying a participation fee, of which 85% is added to the prize pool while 15% goes to Fanton. Teams that score more points than others are rewarded with TON coins and collectible cards.

Fanton features soccer superstars as NFT cards. Source: Fanton

Cards are divided into rarity classes based on their scarcity, giving them value and uniqueness. Non-NFT cards are classified as common, while NFT cards can have rare, epic and legendary rarities. The game is free to play and provides common cards without charge for everyone who wants to participate. The rarer NFT cards should be purchased to take part in special NFT tournaments with higher prizes.

Fanton became a part of the Cointelegraph Accelerator program with its straightforward product that is already showing good traction in user onboarding and revenue. The Cointelegraph Accelerator team was inspired by the innovative game-in-a-messenger format, easy user onboarding and the perspective of crypto adoption via messengers. The platform has over 350,000 users and surpassed $40,000 in monthly revenue. With a seasoned team of 15 based in Spain and Indonesia, the game managed to raise $300,000 in a pre-seed round in February.

Today, October 27, 2023, Fanton launched its product on Product Hunt, a platform where users can discover and upvote new products. Fanton encourages its supporters to visit Product Hunt on Friday and upvote the product.