IT giant Intel is running an internal blockchain trial centered on a fantasy sports market.
The proof of concept works by enabling the exchange of digitized assets that represent shares of different sports teams. Each contestant is given a set of shares, as well as a quantity of in-game currency called "mikels".
Participants can then sell or trade the shares with the league or other players, with buyback offers for shares tied to the number of points scored by teams during games they win. At the end of the trial, the user with the most currency is declared the winner.
The concept was presented earlier this month by Intel during closed-door meeting for the Hyperledger Project , the Linux Foundation-led open-source blockchain initiative that includes 30 members from major tech institutions, international banks and industry startups.
An Intel representative said during that meeting that the game is currently open to anyone at the Santa Clara-based company for participation, remarking that the company sees the trial as a way to test the strength of its internal blockchain technology.
The representative explained: "We’re actually taking that marketplace out and we’re running an internal trial … which is a football exchange, but it will be an NCAA basketball pool kind of game where you exchange shares of teams. Our expectation is that it’s going to give us expectations of real workloads running in the wild in consumer applications." Notably, the representative said it’s blockchain is not yet "production quality" and that it is currently being optimized for performance. Though the company has been quiet about its work, Intel’s involvement with bitcoin and blockchain tech is not new, and can be traced back to its work with 21 Inc , the bitcoin startup for which it developed mining chips.
As reported by CoinDesk, staff within Intel had expressed interest […]
