Socios.com Chain Analysis

From currencies that resemble digital cash, to utility tokens that act as a fuel for blockchain ecosystems or security tokens, that represent shares in equity, the cryptocurrency market has seen several innovations since its inception. A relatively new addition to these innovations are fan tokens, which give fans the chance to interact with sports clubs, depending on which and how many tokens they are holding. These fan tokens are issued by Socios.com, whose app has been live since October 2019. In this article, I will take a closer look at blockchain statistics of fan tokens as well as blockchain statistics of Socios.com’s native utility token Chiliz. The data snapshot for this analysis was taken on May 31, 2020.

Let’s start with the allocation of Socios’ utility token Chiliz among holders. Since CHZ is issued on both Ethereum and Binance Chain, we have to combine numbers of both chains to calculate the total amount of addresses holding CHZ. Currently, there are 206 addresses holding 1 million Chiliz or more, while 1,460 addresses are holding a minimum amount of 100,000 CHZ. 6,243 addresses are holding at least 10,000 CHZ, whereas at least 1,000 CHZ are held by 7,955 thousand addresses.

The number of holders (especially with smaller balances) should increase, the more utility CHZ provides. The transaction growth of CHZ on Ethereum already displays the growing utilization of Chiliz. While there were just around one thousand transactions in October 2019, the transaction numbers went up once the Socios.com app went live in late October 2019. November 2019 already saw an 80% increase in transactions with 1,857 transactions compared to October. The transaction numbers then declined in December 2019 (1,492 transactions) and January 2020 (1,256 transactions).

However, February 2020 saw a significant rise in transactions with a 400% increase compared to January 2020. This surge most likely happened due to several different fan token offerings going live on Socios.com, that could only be purchased with CHZ. March 2020 confirmed that growth, with over 6 thousand transactions for the second month in a row. The transaction numbers went even higher in April 2020 with 7,820 transactions of CHZ on Ethereum. A significant surge happened in May 2020, when transaction numbers went up by 89% compared to April to a peak of 14,755 transactions in a single month.

Moving on to the transaction growth of fan tokens, we see a slightly different picture. In the first full month after the app release, the number of monthly fan token transactions already reached a peak of nearly 19 thousand transactions in November 2019. The following two months saw transaction numbers around the 15k mark, with 16 thousand transactions in December 2019 and 14 thousand transactions in January 2020. In February 2020, the number of fan token transactions declined to around 4 thousand transactions. March 2020 saw 3.3 thousand transactions, while transaction numbers declined further in April 2020 to 1.6 thousand transactions. May 2020 ended the trend of declining monthly transaction numbers and saw a 418% increase in fan token transactions compared to April 2020 with a 4-months-high of 8,109 transactions.

Fan tokens of seven clubs were distributed in this time span. Six football teams accounted for 93% of all fan token transactions, while one e-sports team caused 7% of all transactions. By far the biggest amount of fan token transactions were fan tokens of Juventus, they accounted for 60% of all fan token transactions. Paris Saint-Germain can be found in the second spot with 11% of all fan token transactions. Galatasaray is ranked third with 9% of all fan token transactions. The fan token transaction numbers of OG, Atlético de Madrid and AS Roma are around the same mark with each accounting for 6-7% of all fan token transactions. FC Barcelona is the most recently launched fan token and although it has only been available in a few hour long token hunt so far, it has already accounted for 1% of all fan token transactions.

Obviously, the number of fan token transactions is highly dependent on the availability of different features in the Socios app. In the last eight months, fan token transactions have been caused by either the token hunt, fan token offerings or interactions with the fan token exchange chiliz.net. The “token hunt” is a feature, in which users can catch fan tokens in an augmented reality setup while fan token offerings allow users to buy fan tokens in return for CHZ. Due to the nature of the token hunt, in which you can only catch one fan token at a time, it causes one transaction per each single token transfer. Fan token offerings and interactions with chiliz.net however, can distribute multiple fan tokens with one transaction. Therefore, the fan token hunt causes way more transactions than fan token offerings and deposits/withdrawals from the exchange, which the data also displays: The fan token hunt wasn’t that often available in the Socios app from February onwards, than it was from November till January, hence the declining transaction numbers.

Most of these fan token transactions distributed tokens to individual users. Some transactions distributed smaller amounts of just one fan token at a time to users, especially within the token hunt. Other transactions in fan token offerings distributed double-digit or even triple-digit amounts of fan tokens with just one transaction. Looking at the cumulative number of distributed fan tokens over time, we can see that already 54 thousand fan tokens were distributed by the end of November 2019. That number went up to 101 thousand fan tokens by the end of December 2019.

Starting from around 100 thousand distributed fan tokens in 2019, the first three months of 2020 saw a stable increase in fan token distribution of around 25 thousand fan tokens per month. Numbers declined in April 2020 with 8.8 thousand distributed fan tokens. However, May 2020 saw a complete turnaround to this relatively stable distribution with nearly 350 thousand distributed fan tokens in a single month, signaling a distribution number of nearly twice the amount, that was distributed from October 2019 to April 2020.

Opposed to fan token transactions, Juventus is not in the lead when it comes to the share of overall distributed fan tokens per club. 39% of all fan tokens distributed until the end of May were fan tokens of Galatasaray. In the second spot, we can find Juventus with 22% of all fan tokens. Paris Saint-Germain is ranked third with 16% of all fan tokens, followed by OG in the fourth spot with 14% of all fan tokens. The remaining three clubs account for 9% of all fan tokens, with Atlético de Madrid accounting for 4%, AS Roma for 4% as well and FC Barcelona for 1%.

These numbers offer interesting insights. When we analyze the monthly numbers of distributed fan tokens, we can see that around 50 thousand fan tokens were distributed in each November and December 2019, while growth slowed down a bit in January to April 2020. These numbers might be a bit surprising, since the fan token of Juventus was the only fan token available in 2019, while several other fan tokens were launched in the first months of 2020. After all, it shows that the fan token of Juventus was the highest demanded fan token in the first seven months of Socios’ app.

May 2020 changed that picture, however. While Juventus accounted for 63% of all fan tokens distributed until the end of April 2020, May 2020 saw an increasing demand for other fan tokens. In May 2020 alone, 191 thousand fan tokens of Galatasaray were distributed, which is significantly higher than the 115 thousand Juventus fan tokens distributed in the previous months from October to April. Other fan tokens were also bought in a much higher frequency in May 2020 with for example 69 thousand PSG fan tokens (total of 20 thousand in prior months) or 55 thousand OG fan tokens (total of 19 thousand in prior months).

Comparing distribution numbers to transaction numbers, we can see clear discrepancies between tokens that have had a higher distribution via the token hunt versus tokens that were highly demanded in fan token offerings. The fan tokens of Galatasaray accounted for just 9% of all fan token transactions, although they represent 39% of all distributed fan tokens. It outlines, that Galatasaray had the highest rate of distributed fan tokens per transaction among all clubs with a ratio of 33.9. The fan tokens of FC Barcelona, that have been only distributed via the token hunt so far, have a ratio of one distributed fan token per transaction.

Considering the fan token exchange chiliz.net, which launched the trading of the fan tokens of Juventus in April 2020, its transaction numbers and token movements have been more difficult to analyze, since multiple wallets interact with the exchange. However, the exchange-related transaction numbers of JUV should amount to around 1,000 transactions since the launch of trading. There were also three transfers with huge amounts of JUV, with a transfer of one million JUV in April 2020 and two transfers with each 100 thousand JUV in May 2020. I suspect all of those tokens to still belong to Socios, since they are most likely used to provide liquidity on chiliz.net but haven’t been sold yet, which is also the reason why I didn’t add them to the number of distributed fan tokens of Juventus.

In this article, we discussed transaction and distribution numbers of Socios.com’s utility token CHZ alongside their issued fan tokens. Currently, there are 6.2 thousand addresses holding ten thousand CHZ or more. The monthly transaction numbers for CHZ on Ethereum went up 400% in February as soon as more fan token offerings were available in the Socios app. With the token hunt not being available so frequently in 2020 than in 2019, the growth of fan token transactions has slowed down from February 2020 to April 2020, although it saw a significant increase in May 2020. The number of overall distributed fan tokens has been growing relatively stable with around 50 thousand fan tokens distributed in each November and December 2019 and 25 thousand distributed fan tokens in each month from January to March 2020, until distribution numbers exploded in May 2020 with nearly 350 thousand distributed fan tokens. Considering numbers per club, the fan tokens of Galatasaray have been the highest demanded thus far with a share of 39% of all distributed fan tokens. All in all, it is really interesting to see the growth of the Socios ecosystem and it will be exciting to watch, how the numbers discussed in this article will develop over the upcoming months.