FirstBlood is a Boston-based startup founded by passionate gamers with professional experience in finance, entrepreneurship, and computer science. Their flagship product allows gamers to compete in player vs player (PvP) and team vs team matches for rewards. The company’s mission is to bring blockchain technology to the mainstream by ushering in a new era of “eSports 2.0.”
Key notes
- Funding status: Raised $6.1 Million via presale
- Built on Ethereum – a global platform for decentralized applications
- Payments and payouts skip the middle man – e.g. banks or casinos
- Currently in a private alpha release with support for Dota 2, with designs to expand to all leading skill based eSports
- FirstBlood tokens are backed by Ether – an actual digital currency
Market approach
FirstBlood is far from alone in the skill-based esports space. However, the fact that players control their funds and that transactions are completely independent of any bank/third party institution, is a major differentiator. Also, instead of creating a virtual currency – FirstBlood leverages real-life digital currency used across the globe.
FirstBlood is a decentralized platform that isn’t dependent on a website with a database of users, financial info, etc. Accordingly, it isn’t subject to hackers and stringent financial regulations, among other things. The end product: skill based competition independent of payment processors with built-in protections against organized fraud and embezzlement.
Team
Image courtesy of FirstBlood
Insight
FirstBlood’s enabling technology (Ethereum) empowers fast, secure and reliable processing and fund distributions from competitive esports matches. Plus, all transactions are publicly accessible, tough to counterfeit and independent of institutional processing.
Each match outcome is automatically verified by data obtained directly from game servers. Payouts are then rewarded – in the form of tokens – to the winner based on the data from the gaming server. This eliminates the threat of fraudulent manual reporting widespread on similar platforms.
Image courtesy of FirstBlood
To deal with in-game disputes, FirstBlood employs a decentralized adjudication system (Jury Voting Portal or JVP). A deposit fee is required from the player who opens the dispute. This fee is used pay a randomized jury to adjudicate the claim (see image above).
Challenges
Independence from banks and financial institutions comes with a cost – user familiarity. Players will have to understand how concepts like Ethereum work, in order to trust the system. To speed the process, FirstBlood will officially support MetaMask – a Chrome plugin that simplifies the process of getting an Ethereum account. Still, new players face a non-trivial learning curve.
Accordingly, FirstBlood must prove it appeals to players from outside the digital currency community. Specifically, do competitive gamers value security and protections from fraud enough to choose FirstBlood? Plus, there are a growing number of esports betting sites vying for the loyalty and attention of the target market.
Outlook
- Innovative product with potential, but must show traction with gamers outside the digital currency community
- User acquisition rates will depend heavily on level of tech savvy in target market
- Built on blockchain technology that has yet to “catch on” in esports
- The ease with which users can “cash out” FirstBlood tokens – for other forms of currency – is absolutely critical
- Partnerships with game publishers will be key
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