CHILIZENS UPDATE #10
Tags: Chiliz, Socios, Fan Engagement

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Dear Chilizens,

First of all, I hope that you and your family are doing ok during this pandemic. At Chiliz, we have been very lucky as none of our colleagues got sick and our main operations, especially in Malta, have not been particularly disrupted. I can’t say the same for a lot of our partners unfortunately, like sports teams :-)

As a general comment, I’d like to say that COVID-19 was an opportunity for us — because it forced clubs & entertainment properties to rethink their digital strategy and their approach to fan monetization. On the other hand, the DeFi summer was a little painful, as it did capture a lot of attention. A lot of money, exposure, time, and resources went into DeFi and sadly it did — albeit temporarily — reduce our chances of being more visible in the crypto space. Having said that, while all this was happening, we doubled down and managed to build/ launch quite a lot over the last 10 weeks. So, before talking about next steps, it’s important to highlight all the latest success:

WOW — all of this last in just 10 weeks? I’m sure there’s a lot more to add to this list, but it’s important to remember that this is just what we talk about publicly. What we don’t tend to talk about is what goes on behind the scenes.

What is news for you, is a huge amount of work for us; sometimes hundreds of hours of work. While I hate to comment on the price action of CHZ on the market, like everybody else who is exposed to it, it is very frustrating, and it detracts from our achievements.

We’ve done such an amazing job already, with more than 350,000 downloads of the app already, and we learn more and more every day. We have improved our fiat deposit success rate from 50% to 70% and up to 90% in the last few weeks; we have developed a business intelligence team that is providing a ton of data to help us improve the product. At the end of the day, our business is not about ‘announcing news’ but onboarding users & partners, and ultimately delivering a product that works.

We also make mistakes and we’re the first to admit that, whether we’re over confident on timings, or we’re reliant on the timelines of others. Some partners that have been agreed for months have taken more time to sign and then announce because of their own legal issues, their holidays, their own COVID-19 problems. Exchanges that have already integrated with the Chiliz Chain & Fan Tokens are choosing to list according to their own agenda. We have had to educate a lot of our partners over the summer about trading, and most of them had to get further approval.

While there is a benefit to being the first to market, there’s also disadvantages. There’s no blueprint for what we do. We have to spend a lot of time educating and explaining, whether its users, media, clubs, regulators, payment processors, exchanges. We love it, and of course we’re very good at it, but we’re not perfect. Our product is barely at 10% of where we would like it to be. We have so much to improve on, but every day we are innovating and building.

Over the last few weeks, we are receiving more and more requests from US facing properties, as well as other territories. Everyday that passes, we become more legitimate as a business and an ecosystem. Renowned family offices from the sports industries are looking at us; famous crypto funds are looking at us; and it’s flattering. We have great opportunities ahead of us.

Despite all the amazing achievements last year and particularly over the last 10 weeks or so, we haven’t managed to meet some of our goals. And of course, people will ALWAYS see the glass half empty rather than the glass half-full. This is very frustrating for me and our community managers on Telegram & Social Media. The crypto community is addicted to news and addicted to “when, when, when”. But the point is, we are very transparent in communicating our goals, but note they just that — they are ambitions, they are not promises. Perhaps we have set the bar too high in the past, as we have rarely failed to meet our goals, but this year has been challenging for everyone. We can never 100% guarantee that we can deliver on our ambitions; no business can. If the crypto community cannot understand the difference, then we have to re-think what we share. I love taking our supporters on the journey with us, but perhaps it is better to only share when things are launched and that’s it. The time we waste handling social media pressure about ‘news’ & ‘when’ is too much. There is too much nonsense. My efforts, and those of my team, should be spent on building technology and building business partnerships.

On top of the hundreds of other things we are working on, which include new community features, new benefits, new payments providers, new fan engagement innovation team, more NFTs partnerships, more sports, more token economics ideas, my team and I are preparing the next wave of Fan Token Offering. We have already disclosed some of the teams involved, and some we haven’t, despite being signed for weeks/months.

We are waiting to launch the testing/listing of Fan Tokens on third party exchanges before launching the next FTO wave, as we believe it will give more exposure to it, in the interest of fans, traders and the ecosystem in general. This is an important part of the strategy to make our platform successful. With the fourth exchange being integrated soon, we are building the right foundation. Should it have happened 4 weeks ago, last week, this week or next week? Maybe. At the end, it doesn’t matter. We are still moving forward and it’s happening. We are still announcing new partners in the meantime, big and small, as well as new features. It is all about continuing to develop and moving forward. We never stopped and will continue everyday. It might not be what the community wants, but it is the right thing to do as a business.

Thanks again for your support, for your read and keep watching this space for upcoming launches/announcements.

Alex Dreyfus — @alex_dreyfus