xG is a sports rewards platform for athletes & players. These are the 5 reasons we’re building on Flow.

xG Studios
4 min readApr 1, 2022

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It’s great to share publicly that xG is building our platform to incentivise and reward real life sporting activity on the Flow blockchain. We think it makes a lot of sense — so let’s break it down:

OK, quick recap: xG incentivises sporting participation with Rewards and Tokens for IRL participation and performance. If you score a goal, or run a 10k in a league or event where we’re active — you’ll get a personalised NFT Reward to add to your collection.

It’s our mission to encourage grassroots sports participation. Sedentary lifestyles are a problem. Governments and sports organisations want to incentivise participation. But existing methods of rewarding and incentivising activity are limited. And frankly, a bit out of date.

Increasingly we’re all expressing ourselves digitally in new and inventive ways. The xG Rewards we’re creating will enable us to convey our digital identity and flex our athletic status based on our IRL achievements. xG opens up a gamified web3 journey that compliments our sporting activity with a new way to show off our personal wins, to collect milestones and unlock experiences.

It’s a big mission — and choosing the right blockchain is a big decision.

But before diving into the details — it’s also worth a brief reminder of the Flow origin story. The Flow blockchain was created by the team at Dapper Labs who pioneered NFTs and who famously brought Ethereum down with Crypto Kitties. That experience led to the genesis of Flow — a blockchain built to make decentralised applications easy to build and easy to use.

OK. Let’s get into it….

5 Reasons we’re building on Flow:

  1. User Experience

In Flow, Dapper have created the foundations for blockchain products that are simple and intuitive for non crypto natives — abstracting away complexity underneath a slick user interface. Described as the ‘blockchain for normies’ and with an ambition to put a blockchain wallet in everyone’s pocket — the Dapper mission statement resonates hard with xG.

Our survey of the grassroots game revealed that most players have yet to own an NFT or any crypto product. Therefore simplicity of use and a focus on product experience is vital for this community. Any blockchain complexity has to be avoided.

The wave of adoption achieved by NBA Top Shot has set the gold standard benchmark for mass market NFT onboarding. For the next wave of products aimed at the everyday consumer — Flow has all the characteristics a developer might need.

2. Flow Sports Communities

We’re building a product for athletes and players . There are about 4m wallets on Flow and the biggest and most vibrant sports NFT communities in the world right now are on Flow.

Top Shot aside, behemoth rights holders like the NFL, UFC and ICC are all on Flow. La Liga is launching soon and it’s rumoured that the EPL is on the brink of announcing too. So the beautiful game looks set to be a significant part of the ecosystem.

Furthermore, products without rights holder involvement, such as The First Mint and Ballerz show that sports communities are forming around content and IP in the new innovative ways that we’re seeing right across the Web3 space.

So, in joining the Flowverse, we’re joining a varied and growing ecosystem of sports communities — we firmly believe we’re setting up our community alongside those deeply passionate about the future of the sport they love — so we’re optimistic that our mission and vision for xG will strike a chord.

3. Fungible and Non-Fungible Tokens

The xG Token is a key part of the xG ecosystem and not only plays a part in the rewards structure but also confers a range of benefits for holders. (Read our Litepaper.) So an ecosystem that can support our vision for NFT Rewards and fungible xG Tokens has been a priority.

As it happens, Blocto have built a suite of Flow products both for developers and consumers across the fungible token and NFT lifecycle that offer xG a robust environment: a launchpad and dex for the token as well as the Blocto wallet and BloctoBay marketplace.

Currently, there is a comparatively small number of fungible tokens on Flow — so it’s likely that xG will be among the first, if not the first, sports project fungible token launching on Flow.

4. The Environment

“Minting an NFT on Flow uses less energy than a google search or an Instagram post.”

The recent report conducted by Deloitte Canada details the efficiency of Flow compared to other blockchains. A Proof of Stake consensus system and multi-role node architecture means that’s it’s significantly more energy efficient than blockchains operating on other architecture.

This addresses an issue that’s important for us all — and offers reassuring clarity on a topic where debate is heated and misinformation is commonplace. Flow’s built to be green.

5. A Developer-Friendly Ecosystem

Dapper has focused on creating a developer-first experience. As they say themselves, it’s battle-tested and the high quality tech documentation and support available has given our team confidence in an ecosystem built for the creation of mass adoption products.

Plus, we’re seeing a growing world of products built on Flow. It’s been inspiring to see MomentRanks, Evaluate Market and The First mint grow out of the Top Shot community. Plus there are defi projects, metaverse worlds and dao tooling…the ‘Flowverse’ is expanding all the time.

🛠 So that’s the rationale — we couldn’t be more excited to get started and build.

More Content on Flow and Dapper Labs:

Long Read: “Blockchain for normies: Zigging When Others Zag and Progressively Decentralizing to Win the Future” by Packy McCormick

Life is non-fungible: Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou’s TED talk

Layer One Podcast: The Flow origin story and the Rise of NFTs with Roham Gharegozlou

Links : https://www.flowverse.co/ | Flowverse Discord | Flowverse Twitter

More on xG : https://linktr.ee/xgstudios

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