Dialogue with Chiliz CEO of the Sports and Entertainment Public Chain: Detailed Explanation of the Neglected Fan Token

Original title: "Best Performing Coins That Crypto Investors Don't Know About (fan tokens explained!)"

Original author: Alex Dreyfus&Luke Martin, STACKS

Original Compilation: Kxp, BlockBeats

Alex, I'm glad you're willing to do this interview. In the recent period of time, why fansToken, Chiliz and Socios still get so much attention and achieve good growth when the overall situation is going down?

Alex Dreyfus: Although we get a lot of attention, I still feel A little frustrated. Much of the buzz about our platform is due to the surge in Chiliz prices, but that doesn’t reflect the value of the work we’ve done over the past two and a half years.

Do you think this is influenced by the return of Premier League football? I mean, what do you think caused this?

Alex Dreyfus: Right now we have 1.5 million users , and this number is growing every day. At the same time, we are also stepping up the launch of Chiliz Chain 2.0, which is more of a proof of authority than a proof of stake specifically for sports and entertainment. By the end of this year or early next year, many of the teams we work with will become validators of the chain, such as Barcelona, Arsenal, Manchester City, etc. So from my point of view, the price increase is just one thing, what really matters is that we have 270 employees and are working hard to grow our business.

I recently followed a crypto trader who has been following Chiliz and fans recently Token. But as far as I am concerned, although I have been observing your projects, I have never started. In the past two weeks, Chiliz's performance has been very good, but I also think that there may be many people besides me who don't understand Chiliz and the Socios platform, and the fans that many people are now pursuing Token. So, could you please give us a brief introduction first?

Alex Dreyfus: Now the situation is that 99% of the sports funds are not in They support the city where the team is located. So our idea is very simple, we want to create something valuable for fans and teams around the world. Different from NFT, Fan Token is a homogeneous Token, designed to maintain the loyalty of fans. If you are a fan Token holder, you can participate in the club's decision-making voting and enjoy a 30-10% discount when purchasing goods. As a fan Token holder, you can vote on the club's decisions, you can Get 10-30% off on merchandise and more or less earn some status on the team you support.

In order to achieve these goals, we have built a blockchain called Chiliz, which is responsible for the casting and issuance of fan Token, and now it is becoming more and more open. We have relatively little exposure in the US and Asia, so a lot of people may not know about our projects, but it allows us to focus on what we really want to do.

Yes, less early attention is sometimes a good thing, it allows you to lay a solid foundation early Foundation. Now that your project has been in development for four years, and the attention is pouring in, it has been quite a success.

Alex Dreyfus: Indeed, we are also very happy to see this success. In 2020 we experienced the summer of DeFi, and in 2021 it will be the turn of NFT, but there is also a lot of hype. At that time, many companies were raising funds to invest in the NFT market, but we did not do so, and now our users have surpassed those NFT companies. Now that the entire market has cooled down, there is naturally less noise and interference, which is undoubtedly a good thing for the team, because they have received calls to help the team make NFTs every week last year.

As you said, NFT is gaining momentum nowadays, many companies have launched their own NFT series, and people They will also buy these unique and exclusive NFTs for their favorite athletes or artists. That being the case, why did you abandon this model and use homogenizationToken instead? Why do you think this is a better way and has greater potential than those well-known NFT companies?

Alex Dreyfus: For me, I've always had a love-hate relationship with NFTs Addition: I love the technology, but hate the hype. The reason why we adopted the homogeneous token is because we think it is more scalable. Sports NFT is now mainly concentrated in North America, not Eurasia, so I really want to create a native encrypted product. NFT is mainly based on non-native brands, which is more difficult to monetize.

In addition, assuming that Barcelona has 300-400 million fans, if you only issue 10,000 NFTs, what about other fans? So, from the beginning of our project four years ago, I firmly believe that we have adopted a better model, and we also have our own NFT. For example, if you have a Paris Saint-Germain fan Token, and the team is playing tonight, then if they score a goal, you can get an NFT as a reward, and those who finally collect all the NFTs of this season will be able to enter the VIP box . Except in very special circumstances, we will not sell NFT, because we are more concerned about user participation than the competition itself.

FansTokenIs there any other usage ? Just now you mentioned that if I can collect all the season's goal NFTs, I can enter the VIP box, so what else can I do? Can you win more fansToken? How did all this come true?

Alex Dreyfus: Our main goal is to increase fan engagement. Before, you could follow a team's Twitter account, but it was a one-way relationship. But if you have our fan Token, you can get the corresponding status to a certain extent and participate in the voting of the club, thus forming a two-way relationship. Of course, you can't decide who plays which game, that's the job of the coaches, but what you can decide is the music when the team enters the field, or you can participate in the design of next season's jersey. That way, you feel a part of every game, whether you're watching it live or online. We have been working to bring the relationship between the team and the fans closer, and we have been investing a lot of money in this regard.

In addition to the VIP box you just mentioned, do users have other opportunities to get in touch with celebrities? For example, I heard that if you buy the NFT of a star or star, you can participate in the fan meeting, or have the opportunity to meet them after the game and ask a few questions. For example, if I hold enough fans of the Ronaldo teamToken, is it possible for me to meet Ronaldo himself?

Alex Dreyfus: This year, we will give away a total of 17,000 authentic Tickets, the strength is quite large. You can download one of our apps on your mobile phone, and then spend money to buy tokens for one or several teams. As long as you can log in every day and participate in various activities on the software, you can get corresponding loyalty points. You can redeem these points for tickets in the mall.

Although everyone wants to enter the VIP box, this thing is difficult to expand worldwide, and only a small number of people can experience it. However, we also want to involve users from other countries, so our focus is not on the small number of people in the stadium, but on more people outside the stadium. We want to connect the team with the world Build connections between fans within.

Founders of other blockchain companies are still discussing consensus mechanisms, DeFi and liquidity contributor pools, while You've been able to watch football in a VIP box, and that's enough to show you're a smart guy.

Alex Dreyfus:That’s not true, our daily Work is also very stressful. What we are doing is a consumer-oriented product based on blockchain technology, which is neither a wallet nor a cryptocurrency trading platform. Today's fans are no longer fans of one team or one sport, they are fans of multiple teams or multiple sports, which is why we have over 160 sports brands around the world. So what we do is kind of like Facebook or other large network platforms, bring all these teams into the same ecosystem to generate a large-scale network effect.

When I was thinking about other consumer-oriented blockchain applications, I also thought of Stepn, It has also accumulated a lot of users in the past year, although it did catch many people off guard in the end. What both of your applications have in common is that users can use your application without any knowledge of blockchain. This is something that most crypto companies haven't figured out yet, but you've made it easy, and I think that's one of the reasons you've been able to grow so fast. On your platform, as long as people love a certain team, they can purchase the corresponding Token to support it, without having to understand Bitcoin and other related knowledge. Still, will most people eventually know they're using a blockchain app?

Alex Dreyfus: No, they won't, because when we promote Words such as cryptocurrency and NFT will be avoided, and words such as Token and digital assets will be used instead. When you download the app, $5 is automatically charged to your credit card by our payment processor, which we developed ourselves because our team is primarily from technology, not finance.

In addition, our goal is also very simple, we do not expect to change the world, but just want to use a small part of the billions of sports funds in the world to serve users Bring a better experience and enhance the interaction between them and the team. Therefore, we designed our own fan token to achieve this. However, we may have to spend more time on promotion, because after all, our ideas are relatively new and different from previous product concepts.

How many fans does your platform currently have, and what is the market penetration rate?

Alex Dreyfus: I think it's only zero percent at best One, this is true of any innovative product on the market. Last year, Inter Milan had our logo on their jerseys, we have been working with Saint-Germain for the past four years, and we have Messi as our brand ambassador. This year, we also partnered with the Lakers, which is featured on their official Twitter account.

But in my opinion, even with the support of these strong teams, even if we can get all the big brands in the world to promote, it is difficult for us to really engage with the community ——This is the crux of the problem. The team is not a professional media, nor does it have its own fund, so our responsibility is to help them connect with fans around the world, which is what we want to accomplish in the next 10-20 years. In the future, we will build a huge community where everyone can participate in digital asset transactions.

You mentioned earlier that you were working with the Lakers and last week you also talked about working with the NFL and Collaborate with NBA teams. However, the US market may not be familiar with your platform at present, because you may have focused more on football teams before, but I think this situation should change soon. With the NFL season upon us, will I be able to support my favorite team?

Alex Dreyfus: We have adopted a different strategy for the US market , because its regulatory system is more complex than that of Europe. So we launched an application specifically for US users, but so far, we have not launched any NBA team or NFL team fan tokens. We are patiently waiting for the relevant authorities to give us regulatory permission and guidance, which may take weeks, months or even years.

In the meantime, we have also set our sights on the rest of the world, having already obtained licenses in Italy and many other countries. The regulatory framework in these countries is more relaxed, and the relevant regulatory authorities have also contacted us and expressed their support for our work. But in the United States, we still need to proceed with caution. Nonetheless, we have agreements with over 20 NBA teams and over 13 NFL teams. We will start working with these teams as soon as we get the license.

Indeed, the United States has very strict regulations on cryptocurrencies, and there are millions of them< b>Token cannot be traded in the United States, even Bitcoin and Ethereum are restricted. Why is the United States so tough on these matters, even restricting items related to sports events?

Alex Dreyfus: First of all, the way the United States manages its teams is very different from the rest of the world. In Europe, the autonomy of the league is higher, which is why there are fewer sports innovations in the United States than in other countries. Despite the regulatory pressure, it seems to us that even if Bitcoin goes to zero, sporting events are here to stay for a long time. That said, no matter how heavily regulated, every sport has its fans, and it's our job to bring them new experiences and connect them to the teams playing.

This idea is really unique, I have never thought of it before. Many projects may say that even if Bitcoin returns to zero, their Token can perform well. But in my opinion, these large cryptocurrencies must always exist, otherwise many small projects will not be noticed. People will always pay attention to sports, but for the crypto market, this makes a difference.

Alex Dreyfus: Frankly speaking, we still rely on cryptocurrencies today, Because the first batch of users who come to our platform are crypto natives, because they can quickly understand what we do. For other users, we still need to take time to introduce our products, which is also the process that every innovative product must go through. Take the Nintendo or Sega consoles 2, 30 years ago, those first people who bought these consoles might look like a bunch of freaks to others, they would think you didn't have a life, because at the time it wasn't Every household has a game console, mobile phone or computer.

So, in cryptocurrencies, the situation is very similar. After all, our first batch of users only occupies a small part. In the next five to ten years, we still need to promote and market to more people and launch better products. Therefore, even if we have some brilliant ideas, we must learn to follow the rhythm of the market, invest a lot of time in the early stage, and develop better products in a timely manner in the later stage.

I am very optimistic about you and I believe you will be able to make better products. I hope that the United States can issue a license to you as soon as possible, and then you must come to California to watch the game.

Alex Dreyfus: Welcome to our official account For the latest information, we will launch corresponding activities next week, and the specific details will be posted on it.

Alex, thank you for doing the interview.

Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:

Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia