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Karate (KARATE) is the first token to govern and gamify a real-world professional sports league.
Karate Combat is a rapidly growing professional full-contact combat sport with 4.6 million followers, 100-200 million organic views per month and approximately 100 exclusive professional athletes.

The league, which was founded by tech and crypto entrepreneurs, targets a young, international demographic through cross-platform distribution, fast stand-up fights, and 3D CGI backgrounds rendered in Unreal Engine.

The league has televised distribution on many of the world’s top sports networks including Eurosport, Globo’s Canal Combate, BeIN Sports, CBS Sports and ESPN Deportes. The league’s events are simultaneously streamed for free on the league’s own site, Karate.com, as well as Youtube, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and Kick.

The league employs some of the top karate fighters of all-time and has been built on top of the massive karate brand and lore, but its unique ruleset creates a brand new sport designed to entertain with a fast-paced and differentiated product.

The UFC (and its copycats) are dominated by jiu jitsu, a sport based on grappling, ground fighting and submission holds. In contrast, Karate Combat’s unique ruleset facilitates a stand-up, striking-based fight event with winners decided by punches, kicks and throws. Fighters are limited to no more than five seconds of ground and pound on the pit floor.

Each of the league’s events is filmed in front of live-rendered 3D CGI environments using a combination of technologies called In-camera VFX and Extended Reality. The league is the only professional sport filmed in front of live rendered 3D graphics. The end product is a viral, live version of Mortal Kombat.

Karate Combat’s assets were transferred in full in 2022 by its crypto-native founders to an ownerless foundation to enable the KarateDAO to facilitate web3 governance and gamification. The new structure enables a web3 game tailored exactly to the habits and interests of sports fans. Beyond real governance of the league, the primary initial utility for the KARATE token is to play Up Only Gaming. Up Only Gaming is a no-loss game built on smart contracts. When sports fans have a wager on an event, even a small one, engagement is an order of magnitude higher. However, the reality is that most people inevitably stop betting on sports because they lose their money. The innovative Up Only Gaming mobile and webapps allow token holders to frictionlessly pick their favorite fighters for the chance to earn more tokens with no risk of loss. For 48 hours before each event, token holders can vote for fighters using off-chain signed messages. Players can allocate all of their votes to 1 fight or split votes up amongst multiple fights. The more $KARATE tokens a player has, the more they can win. Players who vote for losing fighters retain their $KARATE tokens to play again next time. Over time active players and winning fighters slowly dilute inactive fans. The league has also fully embraced a web3 open ecosystem go-to-market strategy by way of an incredibly permissive IP license, initially in the categories of NFTs & video games. The league will also be open sourcing its smart contracts and front ends, to foster a vibrant ecosystem of applications built on top of the Up Only Gaming primitives.

To date most fan tokens and sports NFT projects have relied on token-gated experiences to drive utility. This is table stakes, and with the entire league governed by the token, Karate Combat can do it 10x better. Karate Combat believes that a transparent public ledger is the perfect technology to enable a shared feeling of ownership of a cultural asset like a sports property and intends to utilize it in full.