Daily Fantasy Games are big right now. They are bigger when football season is ongoing, but they are big all year nonetheless. FundFantasy wants to leverage that but for stocks and other financial services rather than sporting events.
FundFantasy isn’t a simple simulated investment platform but rather you join leagues and compete against other fantasy investors, not unlike what Draft Kings and FanDuel, but with stocks instead of players. What makes FundFantasy unique from them, other than the change in venue from sports to finance, is the clever ways it utilizes blockchain technology and cryptography.
I recently wrote about Mark.Space[1] VR and derided it for the way it seemed to slap blockchain technology onto something that was hurt rather than helped by it. At first glance it may seem like FundFantasy is doing something similar. After all, FanDuel and DraftKings have been very successful without the advantage of blockchain technology.
But, unlike Virtual Reality real estate, fantasy betting has a lot to gain by using blockchain technology and cryptography. While Fan Duel and Draft Kings have had enormous success, both have been plagued by a few major issues. One of these issues, blockchain technology can solve.
Back in 2015, Draft Kings and Fan Duel were the kings of start up world. Combining America’s love for gambling on sports with the ever-growing omnipresence and convenience of smart phones, the two companies managed to turn fantasy sports gambling into a massive industry. DraftKings alone was once valued at over $1 billion. In the lead up to the NFL season that year, they spent[2] a combined $207 million in three weeks alone.
And then the scandals started pouring in. Accusations of insider trading were rampant. Super users were dominating and keeping most of the winnings themselves by playing in hundreds of games a day[3]. Most of the winnings were going to a small percentage of users. There were also scandals that had less to do with the fairness of the game but were nonetheless damaging to the companies, like allegedly helping players join from states where such betting was illegal.
But it is the scandals that affect the fairness of the game that the blockchain has the potential to help. The largest scandal, as far as impact on user’s perspective on the games and their chance of winning goes, was the insider trading issue.
In sports there are only so many players worth adding to a fantasy team. In a fantasy basketball game for an example, LeBron James’ value is known by every team owner. He is arguably the best player in the world and in real life basketball, would help any team he plays for. But in fantasy sports, if 90% of the team GMs are putting James on their team and he outperforms expectations, that only gives the GM an advantage over the 10% of teams that neglected to play him.
