In circle: Alexandre Dreyfus (third from left) enjoys a beer with Silvio Schembri and Binance founder Zhao Changpeng

A man credited as co-creating the famous cryptocurrency Ethereum has invested an unspecified amount of money in a new Maltese blockchain project intended to tokenise voting rights for esports teams.

Stephen Nerayoff, who leads the blockchain investment company Global Blockchain, was one of the private investors credited by gaming platform chillZ for helping it raise a whopping $65 million in a few days.

“We have been overwhelmed by the demand for chiliz tokens in the last few days,” chiliZ CEO Alexandre Dreyfus told Medium. “It has been a combination of hard work from the team, but also our strategic partners who invested and believe in our long term vision. This gives us a great runaway to develop and deploy our vision, and to start looking at acquisitions.”

Parliamentary secretary for the digital economy Silvio Schembri praised Dreyfus, describing Malta as “the island of make it happen”.

The chiliZ platform intends to democratise esports by allowing fans to purchase tokens and trade them in for voting rights for their favourite teams. The project is set to launch at the end of the year and chiliZ has already confirmed future plans to branch out this concept into traditional sports.

Apart from Nerayoff, investors in Dreyfus’ project include Binance, OK Blockchain Capital, FBG Capital, Ceyuan Ventures and Bancor.

“Being a Malta-based company has really helped us to secure investment contribution,” said chiliZ communications director Emma Diskin. “Malta is soon-to-be regulated, and has a pro-blockchain government. Right now, it is the best place in the world to build blockchain initiatives. We are very lucky to have called Malta home for the last 12 years.”

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Tim Diacono

Tim is interested in the rapid evolution of human society and is passionate about justice, human rights and cutting-edge political debates. You can follow him on Instagram or Twitter/X at @timdiacono or reach out to him at [email protected]