The Fantasy Sports industry has seen phenomenal growth over the last two decades, both in the number of players and in the number of such platforms. This has catapulted the global Fantasy Sports market to a valuation of US$ 20.7 billion in 2020. It is further expected to grow at a CAGR of almost 13% from 2021 to 2027, and reach a valuation of US$ 48 billion.

Fantasy Sports can be described as online competitive games where users can build a virtual team of real-life players and earn points based on how well the team performs in real life matches.

They can change their teams subject to certain in-game rules. The aim remains to pick a set of players which can earn the user the maximum amount of points.

Almost all of these Fantasy Sports operate with a Play-to-Earn (P2E) model, whereby the creation of the team requires the payment of participation fees in some form. Users who end up on top of the Leaderboard after each season or tournament are rewarded in real monetary value.

Some of these platforms also host Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS), whereby users can participate in daily contests and win prizes as well, apart from the seasonal rewards.

The lure of Fantasy Sports has charmed Sports enthusiasts all over the world. In the United States, Fantasy Sports is consumed by nearly 57.4 million, or 1 in every 5 persons. On the other side of the globe, in India, the Fantasy Sports sector is growing at a CAGR of 32%, and is slated to reach US$ 3.7 billion by 2024.

The Dark Underbelly of Fantasy Sports

Mobile applications such as DraftKings, Dream11 and MyTeam11 have played a significant role in popularizing this new gaming revolution. However, these platforms are all centralized systems, and are vulnerable to human error, intervention or simply deceit.

Users often complain about the lack of transparency when dealing with such platforms. These applications provide absolutely no visibility into what goes on behind the scenes, forcing users to blindly trust the system.

Game developers have often come under criticism for displaying fake “winners” with enormous rewards just for the sake of attracting a wider user base, and then keeping the actual number of players, contests, and distribution percentage hidden to make high margins.

There is also the scope for illicit or illegal activities such as betting fraud and point manipulation, in a way which will help the individuals running the platform.

In fact, class action lawsuits have been filed against Fantasy Sports platforms like DraftKings and FanDuel, alleging fraud, negligence and false advertising, which resulted in both the companies being probed by the New York State Attorney General.

Blockchain to the Rescue

Blockchain is the ready solution to all the centralization and trust issues. Fantasy Sports platforms are rapidly embracing blockchain technology today, to design a decentralized, fraud-proof and 100% transparent system.

Every transaction is permanently written on a public ledger, and anyone who is interested can view and verify the transactions. This completely rules the scope for any type of fraud that might be committed by fudging data or keeping information hidden. Blockchain makes it possible to track the data associated with teams, players and winners in an immutable way.

Blockchain technology also opens the doorway to decentralization, allowing the users the opportunity to not only participate in the game but also in the decision making processes associated with the platform. This further reduces the influence of the game developers and administrators.

Some of the biggest names in the online gaming industry, such as Sorare and Defi11, have already adopted blockchain technology to offer such distinguished features. Their extensive user base validates the need of the innovations that blockchain brings to the Fantasy Sports industry.

Enter TradeStars

TradeStars is a revolutionary P2E Fantasy Sports Game which leverages blockchain technology to provide an unparalleled gameplay experience to users.

Gamers can trade Fantasy Sports Stocks on TradeStars whose value is directly influenced by both the historic and the current real-life performances of athletes. This is similar to building a team akin to conventional Fantasy Sports platforms, but with a host of additional benefits and features.

There are absolutely no restrictions when it comes to the amount of Fantasy Stocks users can purchase. This provides complete flexibility to the users to buy as many or as little stocks as they want.

Fantasy Stocks purchased on TradeStars remain in the users’ wallets till the time they decide to sell them. If users can identify and purchase early stocks of new talented players while their stock price is still low, they can earn handsome rewards on their investment in the long run.

TradeStars also features DFS contests, where users can win special prizes just by holding Fantasy Stocks of the best performing players of the day. This has been extremely popular among Sports lovers, and has led to a flurry of trade activity on the platform during match days.

The Tech Behind the Game

TradeStars has been developed on the Ethereum blockchain, and is powered by Layer 2 scaling solution Polygon. Every single trade on the platform is recorded permanently on Ethereum, completely eliminating the scope for any form of manipulation or fraud.

Integration with Polygon’s world-class scaling technology ensures that transactions are settled almost instantly and free of cost, not only now but even in the future when the user base would have grown appreciably.

The real-life performance stats of the athletes are tokenized through Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). NFTs are being increasingly used to represent unique collector items, works of art, or even intellectual properties in the digital world.

TradeStars actually uses a specialized form of NFTs, known as Fractional or F-NFTs. For every player listed on the platform, a fixed amount of F-NFT based stocks are issued. The fractional implementation is what provides users the ease of trading stocks in any amount as they want, even fractions.

The trading markets are managed by a set of smart contracts, which provides seamless price discovery and a state-of-the-art trading experience for users.

Trades are performed through TSX, an ERC-20 token which is TradeStars’ in-game currency. TSX is also the  governance token of the ecosystem, and will allow holders to participate in the decisions related to the governance of the platform through decentralized voting rounds in the future.

Several other features are expected to go live on TradeStars in the near future, including TSX staking and fiat gateways. New and exciting DFS contests are also in the works.

Visit https://tradestars.app to experience the future of Fantasy Sports.