First, we had friend.tech — the onchain social chat room app that took Crypto Twitter by storm and turned your favorite shitposters into volatile stocks.

Now it’s fantasy.top, featuring less chatting and more PvP.

Context

fantasy.top is a social-media-based trading card game on the Blast L2 which just launched a beta yesterday.You build a deck of five of your favorite crypto Twitter accounts (which have been turned into trading cards) and compete for rewards against other players in tournaments.To get these cards you can either buy a pack of five random ones at a flat price that changes based on demand:

Or, buy specific cards on the public marketplace:

The more attention the shitposters (or trusted financial advisors) in your deck get on Twitter, the higher their score during tournaments.Prize pools can include Blast Gold (airdrop allocation for the chain’s token), ETH, more trading cards, and FAN points (expected to tie into a future token for the game).The game’s founders are pseudonymous, but they are backed by VCs with crypto track records, Alliance and Manifold.

Our take

Can already hear the cynics: “Great, another way for influencers to farm free money so they can dump on everyone’s heads”.

And it’s true that the accounts involved (who have to apply to become a tradeable card or “hero”) are getting a cut: 1.5% of their card’s trading volume, a share of the pack sales revenues, improved token farming, etc.

C’est la vie. Best get accustomed to SocialFi apps leveraging and rewarding big accounts to draw attention, because it’s not going away.

Who is this for? Fantasy sports enjoyers and people whose screen time is made up of at least 25% Twitter (we pray for their mental health).The game’s current iteration is specifically aimed at shitpost appreciators, crypto alpha scanners, and social media reply guys.Is it accessible? From a price perspective, not quite. If you were early to the project you got some free goodies, but now a pack of five cards costs around 0.18 - 0.28 ETH.There’s a chance you get lucky and pull a super rare card, but chances are you won’t.

There’s also an insane amount of friction just to play. I had to connect my Twitter to the app, tweet a canned promotion, and add funds to the in-game wallet before I could even see my profile on the website. I only found the game’s explainer doc by chance on Twitter.

Bottom line

It’s a fresh twist on SocialFi, and at least is pretty transparent in its utility. No fake community, no grinding in a dead chat room, just speculation and collecting your friends or favorite accounts. 

Of course, it does lead to some weird social implications given that your gains are tied to someone’s Twitter engagement.

There’s already some botting (which the team is attempting to counter), and you can already hear all the “wen tweet” DMs coming to an influencer near you.

Going to be fun watching this play out.