As our platform rapidly grew to over 250.000 registered users since its first start last year, we have gained a lot of experience in what a state-of-the-art esports prediction platform needs to deliver. Based on our experience and user feedback we have disassembled our platform and looked at all of its sections. Much had to be reworked and repurposed or even thrown out entirely. We then rebuild everything from scratch and are happy to have set new standards. Today we are able to introduce the all new herosphere.gg!
What’s new?
It was very important to offer a simple and clean user interface which ensures a flawless navigation through herosphere. It displays the relevant content to the user and melts into the background, allowing the focus and excitement of esports to take the front seat.
We stayed within the familiar brand and colors but added a more modern and clean touch.
Meanwhile our back-end development team focused on rebuilding the back-end using top-notch frameworks and packages, adhering best practices and coding standards to deliver a fast paced and secure infrastructure for the best eSports betting experience to our users.
Due to our partnership with Abios Gaming, one of the worlds most trusted esports APIs, with very detailed data and broad coverage of matches we are able to offer more exciting games and fully automated and significantly faster contest handlings. As a result, we are expanding our pool of featured games on herosphere by Starcraft 2 and Hearthstone, which will accompany CS:GO, Dota 2 and League of Legends.
Within those games we are able to offer more contests with up to 13 different modi (a modus could be “50% x 2” for example so the players have a chance to double their buy-in or the winner takes it all etc.) and a variety of buy-in amounts.
Existing user accounts are automatically merged on to the new platform, previous account balances are certainly credited as spheres, the new virtual currency until our own Cryptocurrency PLAY is fully integrated on herosphere.
Users have now the chance to bet on matches but also to participate through fantasy elements.
Adding fantasy prediction
Fantasy gaming gives you the opportunity to draft your own dream team consisting of five players of your choice and significantly improve your score accordingly to their real life performance in the game.
In fact the results of match prediction and fantasy will both be counted together with points, making up the final score of a user.
The score is the sum of all points. Depending on each game, points are given for right match results and the ingame performance of your team members on the fantasy element (eg you get points for kills or lose points for deaths). The point system is of course different for each game and is always explained under the “info” tab for each contest. Each user is then ranked on the final amount of points. Based on this, payouts (spheres) are performed.
In the rare case of users having an equal score, the player with more exact bets and the higher account level will also be ranked higher. The more spheres you gather, the higher your account level gets. Once reached a certain level you can’t drop from it anymore.
Spheres can be exchanged for awesome new prices like gaming equipment, skins and other goodies in our shop, which currently is being remastered, in order to ensure and maintain our standards and offer the best possible user experience in every aspect of our platform. Within the next few weeks the shop will open again and spheres can be redeemed.
What’s next?
Thanks to this state-of-the-art set-up we now have a solid base to continuously add more and more features on top and grow the platform to the number one go to esports prediction & fantasy platform.
This relaunch was the last major step in preparing everything for the integration of PLAY and proving the blockchain use case true. We are confident to update you on this within the next weeks.
THE NEWS INDUSTRY IS AT RISK
The move of a substantial part of the news industry to the internet is irreversible, readers have voted by clicking consistently. However, the online news industry is in decline. While movie and music distributors like Netflix and Spotify have established popular and successful subscription-based revenue models, online news publishers have not yet replicated their successes. Even though we all consume more news than ever, there is no solid link yet between the readers of news and the publishers.
As news is constantly changing, the hurdles to an economically viable business model are higher in the news industry.
THE EXISTING INFRASTRUCTURE
Most of us were used to the printed press in the past, we paid for it by buying publications at the newsstand or by way of subscriptions which led to physical delivery in our letterboxes or on our office desks.
Meanwhile online access to news is more convenient and we enjoy the timely updates. Publishers have followed suit by running websites with free news content. These sites generate some income through ads and paywalls, but they are not commercially sustainable.
The existing structure does not generate enough incentives which would convince a sufficient number of readers to go for higher-value chargeable online content which is at the quality level of the printed press. Consumers got used to less demanding texts for which they pay nothing.
Meanwhile publishers are exposed to starvation, even though we need them urgently as indispensable cornerstones of our democratic systems.
THE SOLUTION
The is the missing link. It creates the conditions for publishers to put their online businesses on a solid footing. This link is inserted, without disruption, into the existing infrastructure while respecting newly established consumer habits.
WHAT THE PUMPED APP DOES
The is a one stop shop. It invites readers of online news to enjoy the convenience of a single virtual newsstand which consolidates freely available news put online by all kinds of publishers.
There is no need for the reader to jump from one app to another to satisfy her or his personal need for information. The app is fun to use, it opens all the alleys and makes it utterly easy to consume and share news with others. A simple to use personal selection between wanted and unwanted news lets the app learn quickly what is relevant for each user. It responds by providing what the individual wants to see.
While these patterns are aggregated and generate valuable information for publishers, the underlying AI system safeguards anonymity. It has no interest in the users’ identities.
Beyond convenience, the app offers its users rewards that make its use very attractive: Depending on the frequency and the scope of their use of the app, consumers automatically receive digital currency in the form of MulTra tokens (MTT). Thus, rather than paying for getting access to news, readers are paid for reading news.
The MTT tokens can be traded via a crypto exchange for fiat currency, easily utilized for the “Pumped Partners Network”, or used to pay for premium content from news publishers. This is simply a shop attached to the Pumped App. The shop accepts MulTra tokens (MTT) as an entry fee to pay for, inter alia, access to higher-value chargeable news content, by integrating the subscription links which are made publicly available by the overwhelming majority of the publishers.
Publishers enjoy an increase in their subscriptions without delving into the crypto space. Pumped purchases the MulTra tokens (MTT) from the consumers and pays the publishers in fiat currency and receives a commission on those transactions. The conversion, by way of a gentle nudge built into the Pumped app’s DNA, is the commercial core of the business. This is true for both publishers and . Our tests suggest that this conversion rate will be substantial. The simple truth is that, once readers have enjoyed the convenience and quality of an online subscription, many of them will be inclined to pay for it with their freely earned MTT.
In addition, Pumped guarantees 100% of the ad revenues to the publishers.
While the underlying blockchain-based MulTra technology may be sophisticated, the user experience for readers and publishers is easy and appealing.
ALL PARTICIPANTS ARE BETTER OFF
While MulTra tokens (MTT) triggering subscription are the fuel which the news industry needs to survive and thrive again, the smooth functionality of the Pumped app suggests that users will have good reasons to smile when they access the app and when they decide to pay for a subscription.
The sequence is clear and advantageous for all parties, nobody loses.
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