Fantasy Shuts Down After 2.5 Years, Reflects on SocialFi Lessons

After two and a half years of operation, Fantasy.top officially announces the shutdown of the project.

Written by: kipit

Compiled by: Luffy, Foresight News

TL;DR

• All angel and seed round investors will receive a full refund of their principal and interest; their investment funds will be returned in full along the original path.
• Fantasy has been self-sustaining through revenue alone for two and a half years, having returned approximately $20 million to the community.
• The core lesson we’ve learned over the past two and a half years is that if a product prioritizes financial gain above all else, it will attract speculators first—not users. This principle applies not only to card-based blockchain games but also explains why the vast majority of social tokens and early token projects have struggled.

The decision to shut down Fantasy was not made lightly. We spent months exploring all possible paths, speaking with people we trust, and seriously considering a transformation—ultimately reaching a consensus that we no longer had sufficient conviction to continue. Therefore, we have chosen to responsibly bring this chapter to a close and end it with dignity.

This article is a retrospective: what we built, why it failed, and the new insights we gained about social products, cryptocurrency, and tokens along the way. We were not the first team to enter this space, and we certainly won’t be the last. If our experiences can help future builders avoid the pitfalls we encountered, then this entrepreneurial journey has had value.

For the past two and a half years, Fantasy has remained self-sustaining through its own revenue. Although the project previously secured a $5.6 million funding round led by Dragonfly, the team has never used any of the invested capital—something rare in the crypto space, and something we are deeply proud of.

The project's core return data is clearly visible:

• Distribute 2,665 ETH (approximately $8 million) to regular players.
• Distribute 1,078 ETH (approximately $3.2 million) to top influencers and creators.
• Leveraging the Blast ecosystem, a total of $12.2 million in ecosystem incentives has been distributed to all players and influencers.
• After stacking Blast rewards, 86% of players ended up profitable.

Overall, Fantasy has returned far more funds to the community than it has received from it, making this the project’s most valuable achievement.

We have created one of the most widely disseminated and highly engaging products in the social crypto space, introducing innovative mechanisms such as industry influence scoring, social graph prediction markets, and a lightweight, free-to-play mode.

We have consistently maintained a pace of rapid iteration and efficient product launches. Even so, we have still been unable to break through our growth bottleneck.

The core reason for our failure is simple: we tried to place cryptocurrency on a foundation that was never designed for it.

Collectible card games themselves have a well-established business model, with popular global and enduring entertainment IPs such as Magic: The Gathering, Pokémon, and Yu-Gi-Oh!. Players are passionate about collecting, trading, and battling with cards, resulting in a vast and dedicated audience.

But all crypto card games ultimately meet failure—from TopShot and Sorare to us today—this is no coincidence, but rather due to structural flaws in the赛道.

The core logic of traditional top-tier card games is to prioritize the game itself before expanding into merchandise. Players initially acquire cards to enjoy the competitive experience; any financial premium attached to the cards emerges naturally as the gameplay matures and the community ecosystem grows, rather than being the primary reason users enter the market.

In the crypto card game space, this logic is completely inverted: the cards become financial speculative assets first, while the gameplay experience becomes secondary. The people drawn in are not gamers who love the game, but speculators seeking to profit from card price manipulation—two groups with fundamentally different goals.

Once a project is fully financialized from its inception, all subsequent operational decisions become severely constrained: it’s impossible to freely optimize gameplay, as any rule change directly impacts card prices; the team dares not easily introduce new gameplay modes for fear of triggering a reallocation of community interests. In the end, the team is no longer focused on refining game content but is forced to become mere managers of a financial market—this is the very industry dilemma we are trapped in.

We identified this issue early and made every effort to break through it. We introduced the Arena mode to lower the barrier to asset ownership, built lightweight traffic acquisition channels, opened free-to-play access, and even eliminated the NFT asset system, fully transitioning to a social prediction market model. Each adjustment aimed to return to our original mission of “games first,” yet we were never able to reverse the overall decline.

The retreat of the Blast ecosystem further intensified development challenges. At the time, Blast experienced unprecedented popularity, drawing a massive influx of users to Fantasy in hopes of securing the rumored large-scale ecosystem airdrop. In the first month after the project’s mainnet launch, revenue reached its historical peak, accounting for 70% of the project’s total lifetime income.

An initial peak performance has left all subsequent operations in a downward spiral. The team is no longer strategically planning for long-term growth but is instead reactively responding to the decline in traffic and interest after the initial hype fades.

This industry-wide issue is prevalent throughout the crypto space. When social tokens were first introduced, their purpose was to redefine the connection between creators and fans. Yet nearly all such efforts have failed, for the same reason: true fans follow creators because they value their work, ideas, and community culture—not merely for financial gain.

Once token price movements are introduced between fans and the content they love, the pure emotional connection will be completely tainted. The most active participants in the community will transform from loyal fans into short-term traders.

This is not a minor issue, but the core bottleneck constraining the development of the sector.

The crypto industry excels at designing incentive mechanisms and building consensus among all participants, which is its core strength. However, a common misconception in the industry is that simply grafting financial attributes onto traditional internet products, games, or social communities can achieve industry advancement.

On the contrary, adding financial attributes only fundamentally alters the nature of the product and, in most cases, severely undermines its original core value.

It is fundamentally impossible to replicate crypto products and achieve scalable growth by relying on the traditional internet ecosystem; the financial attributes are merely additional features that will directly reshape the user base structure and the original motivations for user entry.

This logic applies not only to end products but also to cryptocurrency startups themselves.

Our team has never issued a native project token, even though we’ve considered it multiple times—each time, we ultimately chose to decline. The reason is simple: issuing a token before the project achieves meaningful developmental milestones is inherently irresponsible. Over 95% of tokens experience a steady price decline after launch; knowingly issuing tokens only to exploit investors is something we firmly reject.

Looking across all token issuance projects during this market cycle, I am increasingly convinced that the token issuance mechanisms of the vast majority of projects contain serious flaws.

Issuing tokens at a stage when there is no viable product and no stable market demand is inherently misguided. I once thought traditional financial regulation was overly strict, but now I fully understand its underlying logic: stringent regulation exists to protect retail investors from startups that have not yet demonstrated commercial viability. The crypto industry has bypassed this layer of risk screening entirely, and the entire sector is now paying the price.

Launching a token without validating product-market fit brings nothing but harm to the project. After the token launch, the team’s focus shifts entirely to price fluctuations, while ordinary users fixate solely on market movements—leaving no one dedicated to advancing product development, causing the project to come to a complete standstill.

Even a high-quality project like Across Protocol, with real revenue and steady growth, has openly acknowledged that the negative impacts of issuing a token far outweigh its actual value—a conclusion worthy of deep reflection by the entire industry.

During this cycle, high-quality token projects that performed steadily are exceptions rather than the industry norm: projects like Hyperliquid, Pump, and Jupiter first built mature business systems, achieved stable revenue, and only issued tokens after using platform profits to repurchase tokens and strengthen their fundamentals—genuine, solid backing for their token launches.

The decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN) sector is one of the few structural exceptions, but many early DePIN projects launched with inflated valuations and now cannot survive in today’s market. Moreover, the sector still lacks a widely recognized long-term success benchmark.

Similarly to financialized card games, prematurely issuing tokens for a project can easily lead to a vicious cycle. Once the token is launched, inflated market financial expectations become attached to it, severely restricting the startup’s ability to experiment flexibly and explore the right path for growth.

All angel and seed round investors in Fantasy are eligible for a 100% full refund, with the entire invested amount returned via the original payment path.

The confidence to do this stems from the fact that the project has been fully self-sustaining throughout its operation, without ever using external investment funds. Initially, investors provided capital because they believed the project had the potential to grow into a high-quality company worth tens of billions; now that the project is no longer on track to achieve this goal, we lack sufficient conviction to use those funds to pursue a transformation path we are not fully confident in.

We deeply value the trust placed in us by our investors and will never squander it on reckless endeavors we do not believe in.

Thank you sincerely! At a time when the project’s business model had yet to be validated, you chose to join and help build the platform, leveraging your reputation and influence—accumulating over $3.2 million in earnings on the platform. We hope this return lives up to the trust you placed in us from the start.

Every community member helped shape Fantasy’s past. All the impressive results mentioned above would not have been possible without your unwavering support. We worked hard to create the most engaging social game in the crypto space—and for a time, we succeeded. Thank you for your daily companionship, for actively building decks and participating in competitions.

Unfortunately, we ultimately fell short of everyone’s expectations. We fully understand the disappointment and regret everyone feels, and we accept this outcome with honesty and humility.

If anyone still believes that Fantasy hides a billion-dollar business idea, feel free to give it a try. The entire赛道 is open with no barriers to entry—we’re happy to share all our hands-on experience and hard-earned lessons learned.

We previously encountered numerous industry barriers that were difficult to overcome; newcomers no longer need to repeat our mistakes or learn through trial and error. Instead, consider adopting a fresh approach to avoid the pitfalls we experienced and build an even better product.

Writing this retrospective is not a formal farewell, but rather a practical reference for future entrepreneurs.

At this stage, crypto card games face inherent growth limitations; social products prioritizing financial attributes are destined to attract only speculators and struggle to build a core fanbase; issuing tokens prematurely without aligning with actual product needs typically hinders project development.

These challenges have never been unique to our project alone—they are widespread pain points across the entire crypto industry. These issues are not unsolvable, but they cannot be addressed by simply replicating outdated models.

We are not the first to venture, nor will we be the last. The most valuable trait in the crypto industry is the courage to boldly explore and learn from experimentation—entrepreneurial journeys are inherently unpredictable, but every attempt holds unique value.

Finally, thank you once again to everyone who has ever trusted and supported us.