Hello, FANTOM guys! Greeting from the OLI Team, a group of sports & blockchain enthusiasts behind OLI, the world-first athletic career token. We are currently considering moving to Fantom from another chain.
3 things you need to know about OLI before continue reading:
A. Up-and-running from April 2021.
B. Making value inflows into its chain: distributing share of prize money earned (in fiat) among token holders - 25+ distributions made since launch.
C. Doing big for promoting its chain right now - can do MUCH more in the nearest future joining efforts with FANTOM gang (see pictures below)
Blockchain projects & technologies are not “rookies” in the world of professional sports anymore. In a bunch of different forms — from NFT collections, to athletes’ salaries paid in Bitcoin, to sports arenas named after crypto projects (tss… don’t say FTX), to sport clubs sponsorships — those are not rare things anymore. The world-class athletes and clubs like Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo, Italian Lazio FC or Brazilian Santos, are now a part of the “GM & WAGMI” gang — to some degree, of course.
“To some degree” — is actually the main issue. Hand on heart, most of current usage of blockchain technologies in sports is just an extended hand of traditional sports marketing. Sport-themed NFTs is a digital reincarnation of collectible cards, which are sold to sport lovers for ages. Partly paying salaries in Bitcoin is cool, but… is there anything new in this, indeed?
Fan Tokens are fun… but can they do more?
Fan Tokens — like PORTO, SANTOS and LAZIO on Binance Fan Token platform — are probably the most successful examples of blockchain technologies doing for teams, athletes and token owners a bit more than just being “one more sales channel”. While a particular set of features is different from one token to another, in general they provide token owners with different opportunities to include into the team life more closely.
For instance, holders can vote on a team jersey design, or a song’s choice to enter a match. They can also get access to some exclusive experiences like visiting an open practice of a team, or meet-and-greet session with players.
But… What if token owners would be able to get their share of a multi-million transfer value of an abstract “Cristiano Ronaldo”? Or vice versa, could they vote to prevent this transfer and leave a player at home? What if LAZIO or PORTO holders could fire one coach and hire another?
This is simply NOT possible in football, basketball or racing — as leading clubs there are de-facto big sports corporations which simply would not let outsiders in, even if there is a technological opportunity to do this. Buy merch — yes? Entertain with a smaller fan experience — yes? Really participate in the decision process & financial results? No, sorry.
But what is hard to imagine in one sport, very real to do in another.
Game, set, match… made in heaven!
The concept of an Athletic Career Token is very simple: the whole career of an aspiring athlete is being tokenized, then distributed through ICO or another form of sale. As a result, token holders became co-owners of certain aspects of an athlete pathway.
Unlike Fan Tokens, Athletic Career Tokens allow holders to influence much more on the project, and also “collect sweet fruits” of their efforts, in form of the share of an athlete’s prize money and endorsement revenues!
While the Athletic Career Token concept can be implemented in different sports, it is natural that professional tennis became a pioneer in this process. In tennis, athletes usually don’t have salaries from clubs or federations. There is also no transfer & draft policy implemented with the same depth as in football or basketball: yes, tennis players can sign with sports management agencies and take some obligations, but they also can remain independent and manage their career on their own.
OLI Project & Token - Past & Present
The world-first Athletic Career Token was created in April 2021 by Oleksandra Oliynykova, an ITF and WTA ranked female tennis player from Ukraine.
While not being a star yet, this player has some achievements in her record — 3 ITF Singles titles, 2 ITF Doubles titles, 3 UTR Singles titles, being currently ranked #672 in the WTA world female tennis ranking.
“In fact, tennis fits well for the crypto world”, — says 22-years old Oliynykova while preparing for her doubles match during a pro tennis event in Loughborough, UK. “In crypto, you have a dev or team who presents you with some worthy idea or technology. Then you purchase a token and believe that idea conquers the world, or part of it. In tennis, it is basically the same — but unlike typical web3 startups, we all doxed, you can see our verified “portfolio” — tournament results. Furthermore, in development, there is one more significant risk: your dev is good, but the product is rejected by the market, for this or that reason. In tennis it is impossible: if we are good enough, we earn”.
While being relatively unnoticed for 2 years, Oliynykova’s token called OLI, worked well on the Simple Ledger Protocol — a small blockchain close to Bitcoin Cash (BCH) developers.
“A couple of Bitcoin Cash guys were among our early investors. They insisted we choose the BCH-friendly protocol. We made distributions after every tournament, converting fiat money into Bitcoin Cash and then sending it to OLI holders proportionally to their bags.” — she said. “We regularly discussed and voted on my tournament schedule. Once my holders even voted on my coaching team configuration!”
At the end of 2022, Oliynykova & her team decided to migrate OLI token to the BNB Chain.
“At one moment we felt that we need more scale, more dapps available, more lively environment around” — the female athlete said.
At this moment, OLI lives on BNB Chain - but we see it as a transition period, still looking for the rising, scalable and community-driven environment. FANTOM suits best for this description!
OLI Tokenomics: innovate for athletes, include & protect fans
OLI Tokenomics is one of its most innovative features, which potentially can make a big change in the way pro athletes rise in different sports, with support & maximal inclusion of their fan bases.
The core advantage of the tokenomics we already implemented is - any athlete should not be a mandatory superstar to become a profitable investment for its token holders. All they need is to have a long, stable career (which is much more achievable).
To achieve this goal, we distribute prize money our player earns from every pro tournament, to 3 main directions:
A. Liquidity pool top-up: so the token becomes more liquid with the time;
B. Buy-and-burn: purchasing and burning tokens after every prize money payout, so it gets more & more scarce;
C. Distributing the remaining funds among token holders proportionally to their shares. This will not only reward holders, but also create a value inflow into the chain (as we get prize money in fiat and then buy & distribute crypto).
To read more about OLI current tokenomics, please follow the link:
FANTOM: Migration, Expectation & Requests
The OLI project is already sustainable due to rational & savvy management of its treasury (see picture below) - still operating on a pretty tight budget.
To reach the next step on OLI career development - which means Grand Slam tennis tournaments where prize money counts much bigger - we need to extend our core operational budget.
The OLI team requests a one-time grant of 50,000 $FTM for project treasury extension (can be provided once or by portions) The treasury funds use for all kind of operational purposes: all sorts of training & preparation costs, tournament travels, physio & rehabilitation, Fantom-branded tournament outfits, Fantom-branded cars etc.
Please feel free to ask your questions here or contact the project manager by Telegram:
@OliCryptoBCH
