Chiliz, the blockchain infrastructure provider behind Fan Tokens for clubs including Paris Saint Germain, Manchester City, FC Barcelona, and Juventus, has announced that Fan Tokens will launch on Solana and Base for the first time. Until now, Fan Tokens have only existed on Chiliz Chain. The expansion uses LayerZero’s Omnichain Fungible Token standard to maintain a unified token supply across all supported chains, with no wrapped tokens and no fragmented liquidity. As part of the new model, 10% of revenue generated from Fan Token sales on all supported chains will be used to buy back and permanently burn $CHZ.
Key Highlights
- Fan Tokens are expanding beyond Chiliz Chain for the first time since launching in 2019, moving to Solana and Base simultaneously
- The expansion uses LayerZero technology with a multi DVN setup and an Omnichain Fungible Token standard, keeping token supply unified across chains without wrapped tokens
- Fan Tokens have generated over $700 million in revenue for sports organisations and are listed on more than 170 global exchanges with a peak market cap exceeding $1 billion
- $CHZ and $PEPPER will be the first tokens available cross chain, with top club Fan Tokens to follow
- On Solana, $CHZ arrives through Sunrise and will be tradable on Meteora and Jupiter. On Base, listings go live on Aerodrome
- 10% of Fan Token sales revenue across all supported chains will fund $CHZ buybacks and permanent burns
- The move is framed as part of Chiliz 2030, the company’s roadmap toward a $1 trillion opportunity at the intersection of sports and decentralised finance
- Timing is strategic: Chiliz is building toward a Fan Token launch in the United States ahead of the FIFA World Cup on US soil
Why This Expansion Matters for Sports Digital Assets
Fan Tokens are not a new concept. Chiliz launched the first ones in 2019 and has since facilitated over 70 Fan Token launches for some of the world’s most recognised sports brands. In that time, the asset class generated over $700 million in revenue for partner organisations and reached peak daily trading volumes of over $800 million across 170+ global exchanges.
The constraint was always distribution. Fan Tokens lived exclusively on Chiliz Chain, a purpose built blockchain optimised for sports applications and governance. That architecture made sense for building controlled infrastructure and deep club integrations. But it also meant that the hundreds of millions of users active on Solana, Base, and other high throughput chains could not access Fan Tokens without bridging to a chain most of them had never used.
Going omnichain removes that constraint entirely. LayerZero has already been used to bring XRP to Solana, demonstrating that the interoperability standard works for assets with existing large communities. Chiliz is applying the same infrastructure to move Fan Tokens into ecosystems where the users are already active rather than expecting those users to come to Chiliz Chain.
How the Technical Architecture Works
The expansion uses LayerZero’s Omnichain Fungible Token standard. This is meaningfully different from a traditional bridge. A standard bridge locks tokens on the origin chain and mints wrapped equivalents on the destination chain, creating two separate token pools with separate liquidity. The OFT standard maintains a single unified token supply across all chains. When a token moves from Chiliz Chain to Solana, it is burned on Chiliz Chain and minted on Solana, with total supply remaining constant. There are no wrapped tokens and no fragmented liquidity pools.
The implementation uses a multi DVN setup, which means multiple independent decentralised verifier networks confirm cross chain messages before they are executed. This is a security measure designed to prevent a single point of failure from compromising the cross chain token movement. Solana’s infrastructure, including its upcoming Alpenglow upgrade targeting 150ms finality, makes it well suited for the high frequency trading patterns that Fan Tokens see during major sporting events.
Chiliz Chain is not being replaced. It remains the core infrastructure layer for club integrations, governance functions, and SportFi development. Solana and Base extend the distribution layer outward from that core, giving Fan Tokens access to the DeFi ecosystems and user bases those chains have built.
The Tokenomics Change
The 10% buyback and burn mechanism is the most consequential financial change in this announcement. Under the new model, every Fan Token sale on Solana, Base, and any future supported chain contributes 10% of its revenue to purchasing $CHZ on the open market and removing those tokens permanently from circulation.
This is a deflationary mechanism tied directly to growth. As Fan Token distribution expands and sales volumes increase across more chains, the rate at which $CHZ is removed from supply also increases. It is a design that aligns the incentives of $CHZ holders with the broader expansion of the Fan Token ecosystem: more chains, more sales, more burns.
The mechanism also addresses a common criticism of platform tokens: that expansion of the platform does not necessarily benefit holders of the native token. By routing a fixed percentage of cross chain revenue into $CHZ burns, Chiliz has structurally connected platform growth to token supply reduction. How significant the actual impact is will depend entirely on the volume of Fan Token sales that occur on Solana and Base once live.
The FIFA World Cup Angle
Chiliz has been explicit that this expansion is timed to build toward a Fan Token launch in the United States ahead of the FIFA World Cup. The 2026 World Cup is hosted in the US, Canada, and Mexico, making it the largest sporting event ever held in North America. For Chiliz, that is a direct path to the US sports fan market, which has historically been the hardest market for crypto sports assets to penetrate.
Base is well positioned for this. Coinbase, which built and backs Base, has a large US retail user base and has been focused on making onchain activity accessible to mainstream users. Listing Fan Tokens on Aerodrome on Base is effectively placing them one step away from Coinbase’s user base at the moment when US sports fans will have the highest exposure to international football.
Argentina and Portugal national team Fan Tokens are already live, with more national team tokens expected ahead of the tournament. Those are the tokens most likely to attract casual sports fans who support a national team but have no strong club affiliation. The World Cup timing is not coincidental. It is the distribution event that makes the omnichain expansion strategically necessary rather than just technically interesting.
Chiliz 2030 and the SportFi Thesis
The company has framed this expansion as part of Chiliz 2030, a recently published roadmap that positions sports digital assets as a $1 trillion opportunity. That number encompasses not just Fan Tokens but a broader vision of financial infrastructure for global sport: omnichain distribution, DeFi connectivity, and eventually a role for Fan Tokens in the ownership economy within sports organisations.
The ownership economy angle is the long term bet. Real world asset tokenization has already crossed $27 billion as institutions experiment with putting traditional assets onchain. Sports assets, including revenue rights, ticketing, and media, represent a natural next frontier for that movement. Fan Tokens that begin as engagement tools can evolve into instruments with economic rights attached, particularly as regulatory frameworks become clearer.
Whether that $1 trillion figure is realistic depends on factors well beyond Chiliz’s control, including regulatory treatment of sports tokens in the US and Europe and whether major clubs are willing to give token holders meaningful economic rights rather than just fan experiences. But the infrastructure being built today, omnichain distribution, unified supply, DeFi integration, is the prerequisite for that future if it arrives.
The TCB View
Chiliz is solving a real distribution problem with solid infrastructure choices. LayerZero’s OFT standard is proven, the XRP on Solana launch validated the model, and Solana and Base are the right target chains for reaching retail crypto users at scale. The 10% buyback mechanism is a sensible tokenomics design that aligns $CHZ holders with platform growth.
The honest question is whether Fan Tokens have found product market fit beyond engagement rewards. The $700 million in sports organisation revenue is real, but most of that came during the 2021 bull market when retail speculation drove Fan Token prices. The DeFi ecosystems on Solana and Base are more sophisticated than that retail speculation wave. Whether Fan Tokens find utility in those ecosystems beyond trading will determine how durable this expansion is.
The FIFA World Cup timing is the clearest near term test. If national team Fan Tokens see meaningful volume on Base and Solana during the tournament, it validates the omnichain thesis. If volume stays concentrated on Chiliz Chain despite the expansion, it suggests the bottleneck was never distribution. Watch the on chain data from Meteora, Jupiter, and Aerodrome in the weeks following the World Cup kickoff. That will be the real answer.
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