Chiliz crypto aims for expansion

The soccer blockchain Chiliz, whose native crypto is CHZ, is aiming for expansion despite the difficulties encountered with soccer-related fan tokens, which are still heavily in the red.

Indeed, the blockchain recently joined forces with FanFest in order to introduce Chiliz Chain 2.0, which goes beyond the popular fan token platform Socios.com.

Chiliz is a crypto dedicated to the world of soccer and tied in a double-bind with the Socios.com platform. The ecosystem was developed on Ethereum and targets fans of various soccer clubs around the world.

The partnership between Chiliz crypto and FanFest

According to the latest news circulating online, new soccer-related NFTs will be available once Chiliz 2.0 (CC2) goes live. The mainnet for the updated CHZ blockchain should be available in a week. 

At that point, soccer fans will be able to try it out before the end of the World Cup. The partnership between Chiliz and FanFest is strategic, as the latter has worked with top European soccer teams such as Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) and Manchester City (Man C) over the past year. 

The company, which has always been sports-oriented, has also acquired more than 20 million fans worldwide and is now looking to mint proof-of-participation tokens. All the while, Chiliz-based fan tokens on Socios.com also offer great rewards as incentives. 

For example, being able to play a soccer match at the FC Barcelona field or watch the Monza Grand Prix from a VIP stage. 

There are also smaller but still desirable rewards, such as meeting one’s sports idols, choosing the music to play when one’s favorite team scores a goal, or voting on next year’s team uniform design.

In addition, Socios.com has also partnered with more than 170 sports clubs in 25 countries and ten sports, including American soccer, soccer, basketball, cricket, eSports, ice hockey, mixed martial arts, motor sports, tennis, and rugby. Eighty of these organizations have already launched their official fan tokens on the Socios.com app, which has high-profile deals with giants such as Manchester City, Barcelona, and the Aston Martin F1 Team.

Thus, both Chiliz crypto and FanFest are two respectable powers within the world of soccer, which is why the collaboration between the two has enormous potential and the possibility of expanding the union of the blockchain world to the world of sports even more. 

Who is behind Socios and what are its goals? 

The team captain behind this project is Socios CEO Alex Dreyfus. He confirmed that he has been an Internet entrepreneur for the past twenty-five years. 

“I created my first company in 1995 at the beginning of the internet. They are the generation of Web 1.0. So for the past 25 years, my journey has always been to try to use technology to create something that doesn’t exist and try to embrace it before others.”

As a serial entrepreneur, he moved on to an online gaming project, with sports betting and online poker. Although there are fewer regulations in France, unlike the UK, there are no betting stores everywhere. He moved to Malta seventeen years ago and, ten years ago, cashed in his bets to raise capital for his next project.

Amusingly, he started out as a Bitcoin skeptic. Coming from the highly regulated world of online gambling, he had a hard time thinking of a decentralized system without an oversight body.

Except that, in late 2017, Dreyfus started looking at cryptocurrencies from a sports perspective. Thus, he came up with fan tokens: a way to create a new revenue stream for the many supporters living abroad.

“On January 6, 2018, I decided to go back to the office after Christmas and say, ‘Let’s do this. We are launching our business in that space. It was a leap of faith.”

Today, the one represented by Dreyfus is the largest company in the blockchain/sport industry, but it is also one of the largest mainstream blockchain products that is not an exchange or wallet. 

Essentially, Chiliz (CHZ) is the entry point, which allows fans to go to Socios.com and buy tokens for their favorite National Basketball League team, Formula 1, rugby or other sports team. 

It is just like trading on any regular crypto exchange, except that the main utility of the token is, at least in theory, to allow fans to have a deeper involvement with their favorite club. Utility tokens are primarily a social investment, not a financial one.