What’s a better way than combining the world’s most popular sports with Web2’s most socialized aspects to introduce new users to Web3 through gaming? Association football, or soccer, boasts the largest fan base among sports enthusiasts, with over 3.5 billion estimated people rooting for their favorite teams. Built mainly for football fans, the fantasy sports industry, a vast network of virtual sports leagues where users can create their own teams, has also grown to become a $25 billion global market.

Mixing fantasy football with blockchain features like nonfungible token (NFT) cards could create an ideal entry point to Web3 for the masses. However, current platforms present complex mechanics for newcomers, and most of them lack in-platform user interaction —a big loss considering the social aspect of fantasy football.

Soccer superstars as collectible cards

Fanton has built a fantasy football game that is integrated into Telegram to benefit from the instant messenger service’s 800 million-strong user base. It features collectible cards of top football players that earn points according to their real-life performances. These cards are issued on the blockchain as NFTs and can be easily traded among players.

The game benefits from Telegram’s recent integration with The Open Network (TON) blockchain, which enables the use of a noncustodial wallet directly from the Telegram app. Users can create a virtual football team with their cards of players, and earn points for their players’ actions in the real world.

The teams are made of five players: a goalkeeper, a defender, a midfielder, a forward and a substitute player. These players earn points based on their performances in their real-life football matches. Points are awarded for various actions, such as goals, assists and saves of goal chances by the goalkeeper. The combined score of the points equals the team score.

Tournaments are organized based on match days of real football leagues, including the English Premier League, Spanish LaLiga, German Bundesliga, Italian Serie A and the French Ligue 1. Players can partake in a special championship consisting of the most important matches from the five European leagues, the Brazilian Championship and the UEFA Champions League, the world’s most prestigious championship.

Users can join these tournaments by paying a participation fee, of which 85% is added to the prize pool while 15% goes to Fanton. Teams that score more points than others are rewarded with TON coins and collectible cards.

Fanton features soccer superstars as NFT cards. Source: Fanton

Cards are divided into rarity classes based on their scarcity, giving them value and uniqueness. Non-NFT cards are classified as common, while NFT cards can have rare, epic and legendary rarities. The game is free to play and provides common cards without charge for everyone who wants to participate. The rarer NFT cards should be purchased to take part in special NFT tournaments with higher prizes.

Fanton became a part of the Cointelegraph Accelerator program with its straightforward product that is already showing good traction in user onboarding and revenue. The Cointelegraph Accelerator team was inspired by the innovative game-in-a-messenger format, easy user onboarding and the perspective of crypto adoption via messengers. The platform has over 350,000 users and surpassed $40,000 in monthly revenue. With a seasoned team of 15 based in Spain and Indonesia, the game managed to raise $300,000 in a pre-seed round in February.

Today, October 27, 2023, Fanton launched its product on Product Hunt, a platform where users can discover and upvote new products. Fanton encourages its supporters to visit Product Hunt on Friday and upvote the product.

Cryptocurrency hardware wallet provider Trezor is investigating a recent phishing campaign, as users have reported receiving phishing emails.

The anonymous blockchain sleuth ZachXBT took to his Telegram channel on Oct. 26 to alert users to a phishing attack targeting Trezor customers.

ZachXBT referred to an X (formerly Twitter) post from the account JHDN, which alleged that Trezor may have been breached after receiving phishing emails on the email account used specifically for buying the wallet.

In a similar manner to some Trezor-related phishing attacks in the past, the phishing email invites users to download the “latest firmware update” to users’ Trezor devices in order to “fix an issue in software.” According to the poster, the malicious email was sent from the email amministrazione@sideagroup.com.

It looks like Trezor may have been breached? @Trezor @zachxbt #Trezor pic.twitter.com/4lmjZE1Quk

— j (@JHDN) October 26, 2023

“Be careful this person just received a phishing email to the email address associated with their Trezor purchase,” ZachXBT wrote, adding that the social media report could point to a potential data breach for Trezor or Evri, the United Kingdom delivery company that ships Trezor devices.

ZachXBT mentioned that two other people on Reddit complained about the same Trezor phishing email today.

According to Trezor’s brand ambassador, Josef Tetek, the firm is aware of the ongoing phishing campaign and is actively looking into it.

“We continuously report fake websites, contact domain registrars, and educate and warn our customers of known risks,” Tetek said, referring to multiple articles aiming to help users deal with phishing attacks. One such article says that phishing emails often redirect to download a Trezor Suite lookalike app that will ask users to connect their wallet and enter their seed.

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“The seed is compromised once you enter it into the app, and your funds will then be immediately transferred to the attacker’s wallet,” the page reads.

Tetek emphasized that Trezor never asks for users’ recovery seed, PIN or passphrase, adding:

“Users should never enter their recovery seed directly into any website, or mobile app or type it into a computer. The only safe way to work with the recovery seed is as per the instructions shown on a connected Trezor hardware wallet.”

Cryptocurrency investors have been suffering from multiple phishing attacks despite many efforts to curb such scams. In September, a large crypto investor reportedly fell victim to a massive phishing campaign, losing $24 million worth of crypto assets. According to some cybersecurity reports, the number of cryptocurrency phishing attacks saw a 40% increase in 2022.

Additional reporting by Cointelegraph author Felix Ng.

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