NBA Champion Tristan Thompson Partners with Somnia for Tokenized Basketball Platform

NBA champion Tristan Thompson announced he is partnering with Improbable CEO Herman Narula and co-founder Hadi Teherany to launch basketball.fun, a web3 platform that will tokenize NBA players ahead of the upcoming season in October. The platform will allow fans to speculate on player values that fluctuate in real time based on sentiment and performance metrics.

Thompson, who won an NBA championship with the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016, said the project aims to create lasting fan engagement beyond traditional games. The company said the platform will let fans assemble rosters, predict rising talent, and earn rewards tied to their predictions and engagement levels.

The project is built on Somnia, a Layer 1 blockchain that launched its mainnet on September 2, 2024. The Improbable-backed blockchain processed over 10 billion testnet transactions before going live and lists Google Cloud among its validators. Somnia has experienced significant trading activity since launch, with daily volumes surging from under $120 million on September 4 to over $1 billion recently. The native SOMI token reached a record high of $1.90 following the mainnet launch.

Teherany emphasized that basketball.fun will not launch with a native token, distinguishing it from projects like Socios that depend on token price performance. The company said players will hold in-app value reflecting fan sentiment and game outcomes rather than traditional token mechanics.

The launch timing coincides with the start of the 2024-25 NBA season, when fan engagement typically peaks. Thompson's involvement brings celebrity endorsement to the crypto sports sector, which has seen mixed results with previous fan token initiatives from major sports organizations.  

Connect with us:
Telegram: t.me/blockflownews
Twitter: x.com/BlockFlow_News