Fantasy Top to shut down, says trading card game model was 'never built' for crypto

Onchain trading card platform Fantasy.top announced that it will shut down after over two years of operations.

According to an official X post, the team decided to shutter Fantasy.top after months of consideration and exploration of alternative options.

Fantasy.top's pseudonymous co-founder Kipit says the platform failed due to one core reason — building crypto on top of a trading card game (TCG) model, which are fundamentally incompatible with each other.

"We tried to put crypto on top of a model that was never built for crypto," Kipit wrote. "Every crypto TCG has failed. TopShot, SoRare, and now us. This isn’t a coincidence. It’s structural."

While the financial value of legacy trading cards, such as Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokémon, derives from the quality of the game and loyalty of its fanbase, crypto TCGs make the financial value their main entry point for players, Kipit explained, adding that this attracts investors, not gamers.

"You stop building a game and start managing an economy," Kipit wrote. "That’s the trap, and we walked straight into it."

The Fantasy.top co-founder said the same pattern is seen "everywhere" in crypto, and is the "defining issue" for many failed projects, including social tokens.

Paying the price

Kipit's also criticized the current culture of projects' native token launches, only to have the value depreciated significantly soon after. 

"A token before product-market fit is poison," Kipit wrote. "Every employee thinks about the price. Every user thinks about the price. You stop building and start managing sentiment."

The co-founder said he now understands the reason traditional finance has strict guardrails against such practices, as they protect retail investors from underprepared companies.

"Crypto skipped that filter entirely, and we are paying the price across the entire space," Kipit wrote.

100% reimbursement

Fantasy.top was subject to similar speculation earlier this year, when multiple X users who claimed to be angel investors in the project alleged that the platform is refusing to refund investments, and "ghosting" related inquiries. Other users of Fantasy.top criticized the project for allegedly dropping the core game feature to pursue prediction markets.

Fantasy.top leaders previously responded to the claims by saying that the company has been fully self-funded through product revenues, and investor funds remain untouched.

The latest statement reiterated that every pre-seed and seed investor will be reimbursed in full — "one dollar back for every dollar in."

"We can do this because we never had to spend the money to operate. The business funded itself," the post stated.

The Blast Layer 2-based game that let users trade "hero" cards of crypto influencers once broke into DeFiLlama's top 10 crypto protocols by fees and revenue generated, alongside Pump.fun in 2024, after raising $4.25 million in a seed round led by Dragonfly and previous backing from Alliance DAO.