Fantasy.top to close; co-founder says crypto clashes with TCGs

Fantasy.top, an onchain trading-card platform, announced it will shut down after more than two years of operation. The team posted the decision on X after months of consideration and exploration of alternatives. Fantasy.top ran on the Blast Layer 2 network and allowed users to trade “hero” cards featuring crypto influencers. The project raised $4.25 million in a seed round led by Dragonfly and had earlier backing from Alliance DAO. In 2024 the platform briefly ranked among the top protocols by fees and revenue.

The project’s pseudonymous co-founder, Kipit, attributed the closure to a mismatch between traditional trading-card game (TCG) models and crypto. Kipit wrote that legacy TCGs generate value from game quality and fan loyalty, while crypto TCGs make financial value the main entry point, drawing investors rather than players. “We tried to put crypto on top of a model that was never built for crypto,” the post said. “Every crypto TCG has failed. TopShot, SoRare, and now us. This isn’t a coincidence. It’s structural.”

Kipit also criticized early token launches. The post stated that launching a token before reaching product-market fit shifts attention to price and sentiment instead of product development. “A token before product-market fit is poison,” the co-founder wrote. “Every employee thinks about the price. Every user thinks about the price. You stop building and start managing sentiment.”

Fantasy.top addressed investor concerns in its shutdown announcement. The team wrote that every pre-seed and seed investor will be reimbursed in full — “one dollar back for every dollar in.” The post said the company can return those funds because seed capital was not spent on operations and the business was funded through product revenues.

Earlier this year, some users on X alleged the project refused refund requests and did not respond to inquiries, and other users criticized Fantasy.top for shifting focus from core game features to prediction markets. Fantasy.top previously responded that investor funds remained untouched. The team’s shutdown adds another example of a crypto trading-card project ending operations following years of experimentation with token-linked game models.