Major League Baseball Announces Ethereum-Based Digital Collectibles

Major League Baseball is releasing an Ethereum-based, digital, collectible game in late summer 2018.

The MLB, in partnership with blockchain gaming company, Lucid Sights, hopes to boost baseball fandom with the potentially ground-breaking dApp, "MLB Crypto Baseball."

MLB Crypto Baseball will be similar to blockchain's most popular game, CryptoKitties, where users buy and trade digital kittens, using Ethereum.

While digital assets have clearly demonstrated themselves to be a lucrative business, the MLB's main goal in introducing the Ethereum-based game is to attract young people back to baseball.

On one hand, the digital assets are similar to the baseball cards and memorabilia that once proliferated amongst older generations of baseball fans.

On the other, the rare digital collectibles are similar to things like "Skins" in the wildly popular game Fortnite.

If all goes to plan, the release of the dApp in late summer will reinvigorate baseball enthusiasts and help prevent the average game attendance from declining for a third straight year.

While the MLB is the first league to fully endorse a blockchain product, they are not the first American sports entity to begin to adoption.

Baseball fans are not the first sport that CryptoKitties is trying to reach - a Stephen Curry-inspired kitty was recently produced the first celebrity-branded crypto kitty.

Across the Atlantic, London soccer club, Arsenal FC, announced the first official partnership between a major sports team and a cryptocurrency firm back in January 2018.