On May 20, on-chain SocialFi trading card platform Fantasy.top announced that after two years of operation, it will stop all services at the end of June. The platform has cumulatively distributed more than $20 million to players and confirmed that investors will receive a full refund in a 1:1 ratio. Platform monthly revenue fell 93% from its May 2024 peak to about $200k in June 2025.
Platform core data: the complete performance report from two years of operation
In its announcement, Fantasy.top disclosed the following confirmed operating figures: cumulative rewards paid to players of more than $20 million; cumulative payments to “Heroes” KOLs of $3.2 million; 86% of players ultimately ended with positive results or at breakeven. The platform claims it is one of the earliest large-scale SocialFi products in the Crypto space, and it completed multiple game-mechanics and attention-market experiments on-chain. After the seed round, it adopted an operating model of “fully self-funded” financing.
On the revenue side, at the launch peak in May 2024, the platform’s fee volume was $10.6 million; by June 2025, monthly revenue had fallen to about $200k, a decline of roughly 93%. Active users also dropped from 21,500 to about 2,000 in parallel. The team attributes this declining trajectory to the same type of failure path seen in earlier TCG Crypto products such as NBA TopShot and SoRare—insufficient trading volume makes it impossible to sustainably support long-term operations.
Structural challenges of the TCG model: dependence on trading volume and the user retention dilemma
At the core of Fantasy.top’s business model is letting users collect and trade NFT card packs that represent crypto Twitter KOLs, relying on trading fees and secondary-market activity to maintain revenue. The TCG model has clear user-participation advantages in the early stage of rapid growth, but when new-user growth slows, the model quickly exposes its reliance on market sentiment and external liquidity for transaction volume, making it difficult to form an effective internal growth flywheel.
Fantasy.top previously tried to break through the limitations of a single TCG model through the following directions: prediction markets, attention-tracking tools, social graph betting mechanisms, and lightweight game-loop design. The team’s announcement confirmed that none of these exploration paths achieved market-market fit sufficient to support long-term operations. SoRare and NBA TopShot have also shown similar downturn cycles before: in the beginning, highly liquid NFT trading attracted large numbers of users, but as new users entering slowed, retention among existing users could not offset natural churn.
Confirmed shutdown timeline
Starting May 21, 2026: prediction markets, cumulative prize pools, arenas, King of the Hill, influence systems, and all related game features stop operating; refunds for unused paid arena tickets
June 18, 2026: main event ends; remaining rewards and all hero KOL payouts will be fully settled
7 days after the final event ends (around June 25): the website is officially taken offline; cards can be freely transferred again and no longer collect royalties; all investors complete 1:1 full refunds
FAQ
What is Fantasy.top’s “Heroes” revenue model, and how is the $3.2 million allocated?
“Heroes” on Fantasy.top refers to crypto Twitter KOLs that are turned into NFT cards on the platform. When players trade and hold these cards, Heroes receive corresponding royalty splits or direct rewards. The platform confirmed that over the two-year period it paid a cumulative $3.2 million to Heroes, and the payout mechanism is tied to player card trading activity and results in ranking competitions. The final batch of Hero payouts will be fully settled before the end of the main event on June 18, 2026.
Why can Fantasy.top provide investors with a 1:1 full refund at shutdown?
In its announcement, Fantasy.top said that after its seed round it adopted a “fully self-funded” operating model. This means that after $4.25 million in seed financing, the platform did not conduct subsequent financing rounds, and at shutdown it still had remaining funds in its accounts sufficient to cover the original investment amount. A 1:1 full refund (refund $1 for every $1 invested) is an extremely rare arrangement among SocialFi and Crypto consumer-product shutdown cases.
What confirmed data warnings about the SocialFi track does Fantasy.top’s shutdown indicate?
Fantasy.top’s data records show that SocialFi platforms whose core income comes from trading fees have a structural risk of being highly dependent on early market enthusiasm. The platform’s monthly revenue dropped 93% within 18 months, active users fell from 21,500 to about 2,000, and even after exploring more than seven “transition” directions, it still failed to find an alternative business model. This trajectory closely matches the prior downturn paths of NBA TopShot and SoRare, suggesting that consumer-grade Crypto products that rely purely on NFT trading volumes commonly face retention challenges once user growth slows.
