Fanplay

Fanplay is a live-event crypto betting platform built on Solana that lets users wager USDC stablecoins on real, physical races — beginning with its flagship Hamster Racing League and expanding into marble races, BeyBlades battles, treadmill contests, and other chaotic live formats. The platform positions itself as "content-first," distinguishing itself from traditional crypto casinos and prediction markets by centering the wagering experience on genuinely unpredictable, tangible events that are streamed live with professional production.

The Hamster Racing League

The platform launched in 2023 with the Hamster Racing League (HRL), its anchor product. In HRL, four real hamsters race one another in miniature plastic cars along a track. Races run daily at 9pm UTC and are broadcast live on Twitch with professional commentary, produced by a UK-based production company. By HRL Season 3, the roster of racers included named competitors such as Max Furstappen, Speed Demon, Hammy Hamilton, and Chewsain Bolt — the latter having accumulated the most wins on the leaderboard as of Decrypt's coverage in 2024.

The event format is intentionally built around unpredictability and entertainment. Fanplay has described its goal as delivering moments that conventional sports-betting and prediction-market platforms cannot replicate.

How Betting Works

All wagering on Fanplay uses USDC stablecoins. The betting structure is parimutuel: users place bets on an outcome before the race begins, and all wagers are pooled together. When a race concludes, the total pool is distributed proportionally among winning bettors based on their individual stake sizes, minus a platform commission retained by Fanplay. This mirrors the model common to traditional horse and greyhound racing, rather than the fixed-odds or house-book model typical of crypto casinos.

Because the odds are determined by the collective behavior of bettors rather than set by the house, payouts depend on how the pool distributes. Betting pools were modest in the platform's early period on Arbitrum, with jackpots rarely exceeding $100 USDC, though a notable single payout of $227 USDC was recorded at that time.

Migration to Solana

Fanplay initially launched on Arbitrum, an Ethereum Layer 2 network. In November 2024, the team announced and completed a migration to Solana, citing the chain's transaction speed, low fees, and ecosystem depth as the primary rationale. The move was intended to lower friction for new users, enabling faster onboarding and near-instant settlement for betting transactions.

The Solana migration aligned with a broader expansion of the platform's product slate. Alongside the Solana launch, Fanplay announced the forthcoming Marble Racing League alongside the existing hamster racing format. The company's roadmap at the time of migration also included voice-activated mini games and a native token launch.

Platform and Access

The live betting interface is accessible at markets.fanplay.gg, with a beta environment at beta.fanplay.gg. The platform is not available to users in the United States, United Kingdom, Netherlands, or Australia. Fanplay holds a gaming license from Curacao, the jurisdiction commonly used by offshore crypto gambling operators.

The platform has an active Discord community and social presence across Twitch, Instagram, YouTube, and X under the handle @FANPLAYGG.

Recognition and Ecosystem Standing

Fanplay gained early traction in the Solana developer community through hackathon participation. The project placed fourth in the Consumer Apps Track of the Solana Radar Hackathon, the tenth Solana Foundation hackathon and the second organized by Colosseum. Radar drew more than 10,000 participants and 1,359 final project submissions. Fanplay was described in the Colosseum announcement as "a new betting and mini game market for live hamster racing."

Beyond the hackathon, the team reported wins at two institutional pitch events: the Solana UK Demo Day and the Barclays Rise Demo Day, the latter being an accelerator program run by Barclays' fintech innovation arm.

Team

Fanplay was co-founded by Gregor Cooney. Brady Nagel is also listed as a team member in independent press coverage. The project was founded in August 2023, predating the Solana migration by roughly fifteen months.

Expanding Product Line

The platform's roadmap extends beyond hamster racing to other forms of live physical competition. The tag line — Hamsters, Marbles, BeyBlades, Treadmills & more — reflects the team's intention to build a portfolio of live-event wagering verticals rather than a single-game product. The Marble Racing League, in which marble characters with names like Spin Diesel and Rollverine compete, was in teaser phase as of the Solana launch announcement. BeyBlades and treadmill racing are also listed as planned or forthcoming formats.

Fit in the Solana Ecosystem

Fanplay uses Solana's infrastructure for low-cost, real-time settlement without being a decentralized protocol. The wagering logic and event scheduling are operated centrally by the Fanplay team, with Solana serving as the payment and settlement layer for USDC transfers. The platform's Curacao license, geo-restrictions, and operator commission structure place it within the broader regulated crypto gambling space rather than the decentralized-finance segment of the Solana ecosystem.

For users in eligible jurisdictions, Fanplay occupies a niche that sits between sports betting, live streaming entertainment, and crypto-native wagering — a format with no direct precedent on Solana before its arrival.