LeagueDAO White Paper
By: Jake Craven
Tags: Gaming, Dao, Tokenization, Blockchain, Fantasy Football

Decentralized, tokenized, and shakin’ up the future of fantasy sports.

Introduction

LeagueDAO is a decentralized open source project building tokenized fantasy sports. The project combines DeFi, play-to-earn rewards, and digital collectibles to revolutionize fantasy sports through non-fungible ERC-721 tokens (“NFTs”), and the ERC-20 token known as LeagueDAO governance tokens (“$LEAG”).

The value proposition is simple: tokenized fantasy sports allow users to own the players that make up their team, and earn a share of a rewards pool based on team performance.

By developing play-to-earn mechanisms, tokenized fantasy sports will allow managers to create value for themselves through their strategy and team management.

Fantasy Sports Primer

Fantasy sports is a big business.

There are nearly 60 million fantasy sports players in the United States and Canada, looking for opportunities to follow, engage, and earn money from their fantasy teams. The global fantasy sports market is expected to grow from US$20.36 billion in 2020 to US$22.31 billion in 2021 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.5 percent, according to Research & Markets.

However, legacy fantasy sports have several key limitations. First, web2.0 leagues and platforms limit a manager’s ownership and control over their teams. Building a fantasy sports team takes time, intelligence, and skill. Even with traditional keeper leagues, you never actually own your team, which means the value you can get in return for that work is limited.

That’s where LeagueDAO steps in.

Tokenized Fantasy Sports

When you apply tokenization (ERC-20 or ERC-721 tokens) to fantasy sports, you open up a world of exciting opportunities to enhance the experience and value for team managers. Tokenized Fantasy Sports allows leagues to truly reward players for their effort, skill, and time spent in a game. LeagueDAO’s mission is to explore a number of different tokenized fantasy sports offerings through the input and guidance of the community.

Our first offering will be Nomo Fantasy Leagues.

NOMO — The Ultimate Keeper League Format

The first product from the LeagueDAO ecosystem is the Nomo Fantasy Football League.

Drawing from DeFi protocols and dApps, Nomo Leagues will allow users (“Managers”) to put their teams to use in an open week-to-week fantasy league that actually rewards Managers based on the performance of their team.

Managers join a Nomo League by staking Nomo Player Tokens, dynamic ERC-721 tokens (we describe these in details below) in the league. New Managers can join the league and add to the pool throughout the duration of a round, and receive rewards proportional to the points generated by their Player Tokens that are staked in the league. By participating in Nomo Leagues, Managers can earn ERC-20 rewards at the conclusion of each 1-week round. Player Tokens must stay staked through the end of the round to be eligible for rewards. The Manager’s reward will be based on the performance of the real world athlete associated with each Player Token staked during the round relative to the total amount staked in the pool. The calculation will be time-weighted to promote true and fair pro rata yield.

Draft — Stake — Claim

Staking Player Tokens allows Managers to earn rewards each week. Rewards are a direct result of the performance of their Player Tokens. If a Player Token does not generate any points during the week, then the Manager will not earn a share of the reward pool. The allocation of rewards relative to player statistics/performance will be governed by the DAO, allowing for the adoption of new statistical models over time (e.g. the recent emergence of WHIP and WAR in baseball).

Reward Pool

The ERC-20 rewards distributed to Nomo Fantasy League Managers are generated by the Reward Pool. Funds collected from the purchase of Player Tokens will be deposited into yield generating DeFi Pools (e.g. Compound or BarnBridge). The yield collected each week from the Reward Pool will be distributed to the Managers who have staked their Player Tokens in the Nomo Fantasy League.

Each Manager’s rewards are determined by the performance of the player represented in each Player Token. The Nomo league smart contract will determine each Player Token’s pro-rata share of the total combined point score of all staked Player Tokens during the prior week. Each player’s % of the total combined point score will result in the owner of that Player Token receiving an equivalent % of the rewards distributed that week.

Here’s an example:

A Manager stakes the John Smith Player Token in the Nomo Fantasy Football League

In the Nomo Fantasy Football League, touchdowns equal 1 point

John Smith, a wide receiver, scores 1 touchdown during the week

At the end of the week, the League Smart Contract calculates the total combined League point score is 100.

John Smith’s points account for 1% of the total League points.

The Manager who owns John Smith’s Player Token can claim 1% of that week’s Reward.

Architecture

The Nomo Fantasy League includes a smart-contract system which consists of NFTs, oracle, fantasy league games and strategy for earning yield from Compound. Each token will represent a specific sports player and reflects that player’s weekly performance. The league will provide users an experience of purchasing, selling, and staking tokens.

Technological stack:

Front-end: React, TS, Redux, Web3

Back-end: NodeJS, TS, Postgres

Blockchain: Truffle suite, Solidity smart-contracts, NodeJS

Infrastructure: Docker, DigitalOcean, Jenkins

Nomo Architecture Diagram

NOMO Player Tokens

The athletes in Nomo Leagues are represented via ERC-721 non-fungible tokens (NFTs). These Nomo Player Tokens will bring unprecedented utility to the NFT marketplace. Player Tokens allow their owners (the Managers) to join a Nomo League and can generate rewards for Managers. Managers can collect these Player Tokens via direct purchases and marketplace trading, and these Player Tokens are ultimately the key game pieces to use in play.

Player Tokens are “Dynamic NFTs.” The properties of each Player Token will reflect that player’s real world stats, pulled from an off-chain sports stats source API via an oracle layer (such as Chainlink). The oracle will be used to retrieve off-chain game performance data and feed it to the smart contract responsible for triggering payouts to winning participants from the Nomo Fantasy League Reward Pool. At the end of each week, the Player Token’s smart contract will update so that the properties reflect their particular real world athlete’s statistics.

Since these are ERC-721 tokens, participants own the Player Tokens they purchase. They can keep the tokens staked in a Nomo League, or, at any point, they can sell their tokens on the open market.

Player Token Drops

At the beginning of each new Nomo Fantasy League, new Player Tokens will be minted and Managers will be able to “draft” their team by purchasing those NFTs.

To enable a fair distribution of Player Tokens, we will release new players via scheduled drops. Player Tokens will be released on a flat curve. New collections of Player Tokens will be released to the community when each new sports league is added, or when new players are added to existing leagues (e.g. rookies and free agents).

The first Nomo Fantasy League will be American Football, and will launch this fall.

Limited Edition Player Artwork

What’s the point of creating a digital collectible if it doesn’t look cool?

On top of the utility we are building into our Player Tokens, we will collaborate with a new artist each season to give that batch of Player Tokens a unique avatar. Each season and sport will be completely different. This has a dual purpose effect of:

1. adding to the collectible nature of the Player Tokens and;

2. allowing us to avoid likeness restrictions and licensing requirements.

Sample of the Player Token Artwork for the first Nomo Fantasy Football League

Gas Fees and Network Limitations

Combining all of the pieces of the Web3 ecosystem into one application requires a lot of processing and transaction capability. Each Player Token has to be updated with new stats for their respective player. The Nomo League Smart Contract then has to allocate a portion of the Reward Pool to each user based on how their Player Tokens performed that week. If we were to launch the Nomo League protocol on the Ethereum mainnet, the protocol and its users would be facing significant gas fees.

As a result, we will be deploying the league on Polygon, and utilizing the benefits of L2 technology from day one.

Name, Image, Likeness

We have been asked whether we need to have an official license from professional sports leagues to run a new fantasy sports platform. Appellate courts in the United States have held that fantasy sports operators can use player names and statistics without permission from leagues because that information is considered public domain. This concept however does not cover the use of a player’s likeness or league and team logos/trademarks.

As mentioned above, Nomo Player Tokens will have their own unique avatars created in partnership with artists. This is a unique opportunity to make each season and league unique by partnering with different creators to design the artwork for each new batch of Player Tokens.

Governance

LeagueDAO is following in the footsteps of the new wave of protocols and taking a DAO-first approach. We’re using decentralized tools from the start to achieve our final goal of complete decentralization, with a flexible smart contract system to add, upgrade, and remove functionality based on DAO proposals. There will be an incubator DAO called League Launch DAO & the final protocol DAO called LeagueDAO.

Governance Token

LeagueDAO is controlled by $LEAG governance token holders.

$LEAG will be used to stake in the system, and as a governance token when the governance module is launched. As it conforms to the ERC-20 standard, the $LEAG token is storable on any wallet — allowing anyone in the world to access it.

The $LEAG token empowers $LEAG holders to vote on updates to the protocol. Combining governance mechanisms with incentive structures, it will serve as a means to align the different stakeholders in the system. $LEAG will also serve as a security and policy management medium, ensuring sustainability and participant welfare.

$LEAG Governance Token Distribution

Initial Supply: 1,000,000,000 tokens with 7% yearly issuance

Contributors & Advisors: 23%

Team — 20%

Advisors — 3%

Seed & League: 15%

League OGs: 3.0%

Seed: 12%

Treasury: 12%

Multi-Sig: 5%

DAO Treasury: 7%

Community: 50%

DAO Staking Rewards: 6%

LP Incentives: 15%

Yield Farming: 8%

Community Discretionary: 8%

Discord Airdrop (anonymous snapshot after 1 month): 3%

Early Adopter incentives: 10%

DAO

LeagueDAO will have control over the parameters of the Nomo Leagues, more specifically the fees and future upgrades to the Leagues. All changes to the Leagues are submitted and approved by $LEAG token holders.

Upon the deployment and activation of the LeagueDAO, the DAO’s treasury will be moved from the League Launch DAO to the permanent DAO for community management. The LeagueDAO is a direct fork of the BarnBridge DAO, which was audited by Quantstamp and Haechi.

DAO Activation Thresholds

The DAO will need to be activated by people locking their $LEAG in the LeagueDAO. Once activated, the governance and DAO staking will be live.

The DAO Activation Threshold is:

3% or 30,000,000 Tokens

DAO Staking

Once the DAO is activated, you will be able to stake your $LEAG in the governance and earn more $LEAG. When someone stakes $LEAG in the DAO they receive vLEAG in their wallet in return. vLEAG will allow you to vote or create proposals, and you will also have the ability to delegate your votes to another wallet. vLEAG is not a tradable token.

Liquidity Incentives

In addition to DAO staking, we will be deploying Liquidity Pool incentives. By providing liquidity on Sushiswap, you will earn an LP token. You can stake the LP Token in the LP Incentive pool on the DAO and earn $LEAG in return.

Yield Farming

$LEAG will be farmable with ILV, BOND, XYZ, IONX, LINK, SNX, ENTR, SUSHI

Roadmap

Current Development Roadmap

The LeagueDAO Protocol is currently under development and the first Nomo Fantasy Football League will launch in the Fall of 2021.

Future Development

Any and all future developments will need legal review before we launch them. This includes new Nomo Leagues as well as additional formats to ensure it complies with international legal requirements.

Ultimately, decisions about the future development of the LeagueDAO Protocol will fall into the hands of the DAO community. LeagueDAO is an open source protocol and Nomo Fantasy Leagues are just the tip of the iceberg.

Play 2 Earn Games

We will explore the application of LeagueDAO’s technology and Tokenized Fantasy Sports models to Non-Sport Fantasy Gaming and Web3 sports (i.e. very rare AXIE battles).

Other possible developments:

Expanding Nomo leagues to more sports (Basketball, Hockey, Baseball)

Tokenized head-to-head Fantasy Sports Leagues

Enabling users to build their own NomoFantasy Leagues with Reward Pools comprised of Tokens of their choosing (this is an open source protocol, after all)

Community-driven initiatives via DAO proposals

Team

Core Team

Jake Craven — Jake has spent his career leading the development of new technology aimed at disrupting the entertainment and media industry. Since 2018 he has worked with some of the leading Web3 developers and product leads while contributing to the development of a decentralized entertainment ecosystem and tokenized IP management platform. Prior to Web3, he led the crowd-sourced event and ticketing platform, Gathr Films, enabling hundreds of filmmakers to release their movies in theaters and for the first time control their own audience data. In addition, he is a licensed attorney in the State of California and specializes in Intellectual Property Law.

Tyler Ward — Tyler is the founder of BarnBridge, Universe.XYZ, Proof Systems, & D64.

Blaize — Blaize is a software development company providing blockchain outsourcing for different types of businesses. Their primary focus is turned to the implementation of blockchain-based solutions along with custom blockchain development for startups and small to mid-sized enterprises.

Advisors

Aaron McDonald

Santiago Santos

Matt Hunter

Drew Austin

Jared Augustine

Troy Murray

Dev Team

1 Blockchain Team Lead

2 Blockchain Engineers

1 Backend Engineer

2 Frontend Engineers

1 Business Analyst

1 Project Manager

1 QA Engineer

1 DevOps

Recap

LeagueDAO is an open source protocol for decentralized fantasy sports. The Project will combine DEFI and collectibles to revolutionize the market of virtual gaming through Non-Fungible ERC-721 Tokens (“NFT”), and the ERC-20 token known as the League Dao Governance Tokens (“$LEAG”).

Mission

To create a global community where fans can collectively play, build, and define the future of fantasy sports and gaming.

Key Components:

The DAO — Governance and Yield Farming $LEAG: LeagueDAO Governance Token Nomo Tokenize Fantasy Leagues — Nomo League and Reward Pool — Users can stake their Dynamic Player Tokens and earn a piece of the League Reward Pool according to how their players perform each week.

Links

Discord

Twitter