From Bitclout to FriendTech, it's clear that Crypto Twitter loves nothing more than speculating on each other.
The latest craze comes in the form of trading cards with a project called Fantasy.top. It has created cards for approximately 250 cryptocurrency individuals, which can be traded on the platform. The collected players can be placed into a team and then enter the competition. According to the project's X account, 23,800 users entered the latest contest.
The cards began trading on Fantasy.top in mid-February, according to historical price data. It seems to have gained traction recently on the back of posts by major cryptocurrency influencers on X, such as cryptocurrency trader Ansem. Currently, the platform only exists on the testnet, so traders are not spending “real” money as much as they used to. However, the project plans to hit the mainnet soon – where it will find out if it can attract the same interest.
“After Ansem's tweet, our growth was exponential. “While we've seen the reach of Fantasy since the beginning, the scale this time around is unprecedented,” said Fantasy.top founder, who uses the pseudonym Travis Bickle. actually.”
While these are testnet numbers, some individuals have seen significant trading volumes for their cards. For example, Ansem saw 439 ETH in trading volume. This earned him some rewards from the testnet's ether. FriendTech achieved great success by adopting a similar model with very high fees, incentivizing influencers to use and promote the app.
When anyone joins the platform — currently with invite-only access — they receive three testnet ethers on the Blast Sepolia testnet, which they can use to purchase cards. It does not currently seem possible to obtain more testnet ether in-app, other than earning it through trading. New users also get five cards to start with. They are available in four types: common, rare, epic and legendary. To date, more than one million cards have been minted.
The platform displays social analytics data for the individuals on each trading card, as well as the people they interact with the most on X. The idea here might be to help evaluate individuals based on their social media status.
Fantasy.top is based on Blast, a layer 2 network on Ethereum that launched on the mainnet in February. Blast aims to provide a native return model for ether and stablecoins, offering 4% interest for the former and 5% for the latter. It was built by Tieshun Roquerre, founder of the NFT marketplace Blur.
Building on previous social finance platforms
BitClout was one of the first social apps of this type to take off, although its launch was marred by controversy as the platform attracted too many users before it was ready, and had several missing features, such as withdrawals, upon launch.
BitClout offered an experience similar to X but where users could bet on the value of profiles. These values were based on the correlation curve, so they would rise significantly. Profile holders will receive a share of trading volumes. It appears that BitClout has been replaced or renamed Diamond.
FriendTech was the next big app to find success based on a similar model. It was similar in that it was possible to place bets on individuals' profiles, but the selling point was that purchasing someone's 'key' gave access to their group chat. Although activity on FriendTech has largely subsided, the project continues to hint at some things Kind of the next stage In the near future.
Update: The card types have been clarified and the total number of cards minted and the founder's comments added.
Disclaimer: Larry Cermak, CEO of The Block, is an angel investor in The Blast.
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