Decentralized eSports Platform FirstBlood Raises $5.5M in Minutes
Upcoming decentralized eSports application FirstBlood.io has experienced a record crowdsale day, raising $5.5 million USD in Ether. The sale ended with 465,312 ETH — most of the money raised in a matter of minutes.
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An Ethereum-Based Decentralized eSports Platform
FirstBlood is an eSports project that allows users to compete in online games, such as League of Legends, Dota 2, and CounterStrike: Global Offensive.
Players earn rewards by testing their skills in the games, tracked on smart contracts and blockchain oracles. People fund the eSports games in a decentralized method with a witness and jury system. Furthermore, the members of the jury are rewarded in FirstBlood tokens to determine game outcomes.
The platform was founded by developers Marco Cuesta, Zack Coburn, Anik Dang, Joe Zhou. The team argues that traditional online gaming platforms are very centralized. This can lead to higher overhead costs which eventually reflects on the customer, they say.
Centralized eSports applications are also subject to regulatory policy for betting, and data breaches exposing players personal information. FirstBlood developers say most users want to compete online without a trusted operator. The FirstBlood whitepaper explains:
FirstBlood’s decentralized online platform will provide an environment for gamers to compete without the problems associated with the current market offerings.
Currently, organized eSports tournaments make up a multi-million dollar industry. For instance, this year, the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (“MOBA”) and FirstPerson Shooter (“FPS”) genres have a collective revenue of $1.6 billion. With the U.S. and Europe leading the market last year, the global eSports economy pulled in $748 million. This industry is growing exponentially with revenue expected to stay in the billions annually.
$5.5M 1SŦ token Crowdsale and FirstBlood’s Funding Plans
The FirstBlood crowdsale capped at $5.5m and the platform’s smart contract stopped accepting new buy-ins. “1SŦ” tokens transfers are locked for two months and will be essential to the FirstBlood infrastructure. The assets will be used for playing matches, hosting tournaments, witness and jury pools, and rewards claims.
The team says proceeds from the funding round will be used for development costs, the full launch, and maintenance of the platform.
In the whitepaper, the team also details multiple weakness the project could face. The FirstBlood network could experience faults within the core infrastructure, hacking attempts, mining attacks, lack of adoption, and risks of an illiquid market.
FirstBlood’s lead developer of the platform Joe Zhou is the co-founder of a Boston-based fintech startup Alt-Options. He also has a strong background in the gaming community with projects like Solome a solo matchmaking engine for League of Legends. Within that multiplayer game, Zhou is a Gold III level player. The development team will also be advised by Augur developer Joey Krug.
The launch of the FirstBlood alpha should begin this December. This will be followed by alpha community tournaments in January and the formation of regional FirstBlood communities. Additionally, to ensure customer funds are safe, the developers are planning a “comprehensive security audit before launching on the Ethereum mainnet.” The team plans to have a public beta release of the platform by May of 2017.
What do you think about the FirstBlood eSports platform? Let us know in the comments below.
Source: FirstBlood.io
Images courtesy of the FirstBlood.io website
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