‘Future of eSports’: Eloplay Launches ICO to Build Decentralized Platform for Gamers and Brands

| Updated
by Maria Konash · 3 min read
‘Future of eSports’: Eloplay Launches ICO to Build Decentralized Platform for Gamers and Brands
Photo: Sergey Galyonkin / Flickr

Eloplay introduces “Smart Tournaments” with decentralized prize pools working on the smart contracts technology, which allow players and brands to organize esports tournaments.

Eloplay, an eSports project, which allows players to organize and participate in tournaments with decentralized prize pools, has announced its intention to deploy blockchain technology:

In our opinion, blockchain technology is the perfect solution for most of the problems that the entire industry has to face.

In our case, the technology can promote decentralized prize pools, a system for game results accounting, and even automatize the betting mechanism.

Given the rising popularity of blockchain tech, this announcement once again approves the growing trend of blockchain acceptance by the eSports industry.

Being initially created as a platform for one-on-one eSports tournaments, the team decided to turn the project into a full-fledged eSports platform hosting team-vs-team tournaments.

Market Overview

eSports is a relatively new phenomenon that managed to spawn a booming industry, and has already been added to the programme of 2022 Asian Games. eSports won the interest of 400 million people in 2017 alone, attracting both players and large companies who see a great opportunity in promoting their products and services for a whole new audience. The number of players is expected to reach 58.4 million by the end of 2017, according to the Global eSports Market Report.

Speaking about blockchain tech in eSports, experts suggest that the eSports market will experience overall tokenization and introduction of smart contracts across most games and platforms. Some even forecast that cryptocurrencies exclusively would be a means for customization and purchase of games.

Eloplay and Blockchain Tech

Being on market for already two years, now Eloplay has decided to introduce blockchain to its ecosystem:

Over 18 months, we’ve been testing various hypotheses related to involving players in different game modes. We tested different options of matchmaking and profile upgrading, which resulted in introduction of Elo Rating based on FIDE rules. We also developed tournament modules: we abandoned one-on-one battles for team tournaments, which include Best of NSingle Elimination, and Double Elimination. At the same time, we looked into our monetization options.

Eventually the team discovered blockchain technology that caused us to take a fresh look at classical problems of an eSports platform. Issuance of tokens and introduction of smart contracts opened the gate for a completely new functionality like smart tournaments.

“Smart tournaments” are regular tournaments with decentralized prize pools gathered by the players themselves, or by sponsors of a tournament which in this case is free to participate:

For instance, if there are 100 teams of 5 people each, and every player pays just $1 to enter, the resulting pool will comprise $500, which is pretty high for a rookie player. Theoretically, the platform could host such tournaments every day with prize pools reaching millions of dollars.

In case a player has no tokens of their own to pay for participation in a tournament, they can earn them by participating in so-called sponsored tournaments, which are essentially tournaments organized by brands and companies.

Other blockchain-enabled options, which are yet to be deployed on the platform, include betting, gamer stats and advertising.

Eloplay’s ICO

Now, according to the project’s whitepaper, the Eloplay’s team aims to raise funds over an upcoming Initial Coin Offering (ICO) to expand the platform’s audience, add new games and game consoles, and run extended advertising campaigns in order to reach new markets of the EU, the USA, and China.

ICO, with maximum planned cap of $12,000,000, will be launched on October 16, 2017 and continue till November 15, 2017. Investors will be able to buy Eloplay Tokens (ELT) with ETH, and BTC.

Blockchain News, News, Token Sales
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