Tristan Thompson Taps Somnia to Bring Basketball Fandom On-Chain

NBA champion Tristan Thompson is teaming up with Improbable CEO Herman Narula and co-founder Hadi Teherany to roll out a new web3 experience designed to reinvent basketball fandom for the digital era.

The project, named basketball.fun, will debut in October ahead of the NBA season and will attempt to gamify the way fans interact with players and games, Thompson announced.

It has been developed on Somnia, a layer 1 blockchain that went live at the start of this month, already notching billions of dollars worth of trading volume in its first two weeks.

“This is how we experience moments together, it’s not just about basketball,” Tristan Thompson said in a press release. “We’re creating something for the fans that lives beyond the game, where your presence, passion, and play actually matter.”

Tokenized NBA players

Unlike traditional fantasy sports or fan tokens, the platform will tokenize NBA players with values that fluctuate in real time based on sentiment and performance. Fans will be able to assemble rosters, speculate on rising talent, and earn rewards tied to their predictions and engagement.

“The way fans value and perceive players should be different than owners and news networks,” Teherany said in an interview with CoinDesk. “We’re trying to give power back to the fan — not just to predict who they think is great, but to actually earn incentives from it. Imagine being able to prove that the fan consensus on a rookie’s potential is more accurate than a team’s front office.”

Teherany stressed that the app won’t launch with a native token, distancing itself from projects like Socios that hinge on token price. Instead, players will hold in-app value that reflects fan sentiment and game outcomes.

Why Somnia, Not Solana?

Asked why the team chose to build on Somnia instead of more established chains like Solana or Avalanche, Teherany pointed to both relationships and philosophy.

“Everything in this industry comes from authentic relationships,” he said. “When we met Herman Narula, it was an alignment of vision. He’s not chasing short-term token hype but is committed to building sports and entertainment on-chain for the long term. That gave us confidence that this wouldn’t just be valued on market speculation.”

The decision also came after lessons learned from a previous project, TracyAI, which Teherany said became too dependent on token performance. This time, the focus is on infrastructure, gamification, and sustainability.

Somnia’s Technical Edge

Somnia went live on Sep. 2, following a six-month testnet that processed over 10 billion transactions and onboarded 118 million wallets. Backed by UK-based metaverse company Improbable, the network is positioning itself as the fastest EVM-compatible chain, claiming to handle more than one million transactions per second with sub-second finality.

At launch, Somnia onboarded 60 validators, including Google Cloud, and has integrated with protocols like LayerZero, Sequence, and Thirdweb. Its native token, SOMI, has nearly doubled in value since launch and is already processing billions in daily volume.

For Teherany, Somnia’s traction adds credibility: “They’ve done billions in daily volume, bigger than some of the major exchanges. That’s a testament to what they’re building—and what we’re building on top of it.”

Road to Tip-Off

The project’s first major reveal is scheduled for Korea Blockchain Week, where Thompson will share his vision alongside Narula and Teherany. Attendees of Somnia House, the network’s flagship side event in Seoul on September 23, will get an early look at the app and roadmap.

“We want to make this as approachable as possible,” Teherany said. “The blockchain layer should feel invisible. Whether you’re a crypto native or just a basketball fan, you’ll be able to join, play, and help define the narrative of the sport.”