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Former NBA player Tristan Thompson is trying to reimagine fan engagement with a blockchain-based platform.<\/p>\n
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“Sports engagement is stuck in the past,” Thompson said<\/a> on X last week, adding that he intended to change the status quo with a platform called basketball.fun.<\/p>\n \u200b<\/p>\n Basketball.fun is a fantasy basketball platform that will launch on Somnia, a newly-launched blockchain purpose-built to support large-scale applications, Thompson said<\/a> in another X post last week. The platform said<\/a> that it will launch on the opening night of the NBA season, scheduled for Oct. 21.<\/p>\n Don’t Miss:<\/p>\n \u200b<\/p>\n Basketball.fun will tokenize NBA players instead of adopting the typical fan token model popularized by projects like Socios, CoinDesk reported<\/a>, citing a press release. The value assigned to player-themed tokens will fluctuate in real time in response to sentiment and performance, the outlet reported. Fans will earn from speculating on rising talent, according to CoinDesk.<\/p>\n \u200b<\/p>\n Thompson is partnering with Improbable CEO Herman Narula and co-founder Hadi Teherany to launch the project, CoinDesk reported.<\/p>\n \u200b<\/p>\n “The way fans value and perceive players should be different than owners and news networks,” Teherany told CoinDesk. “We’re trying to give power back to the fan \u2014 not just to predict who they think is great, but to actually earn incentives from it. Imagine being able to prove that the fan consensus on a rookie’s potential is more accurate than a team’s front office.”<\/p>\n Trending: Shaquille O’Neal wants people to take heart health seriously \u2014 this AI-ECG could make that easier<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u200b<\/p>\n Teherany also told CoinDesk that the decision not to launch a token for basketball.fun was partly informed by experiences from a previous project called TracyAI, a basketball-focused AI agent also launched by Thompson. According to Teherany, the project has become too dependent on the token performance. The project\u2019s token TRACY was last trading at $0.000078, down 99.6% from its February price record of $0.018.<\/p>\n \u200b<\/p>\n