Creative Incentivization with Shenanigan

Panvala Observer Weekly Newsletter

This week we spoke with Victor of Shenanigan, a platform for athletes that uses financial incentives to drive personal improvement.

Creating Incentives to Meet Challenges

Victor founded Shenanigan two years ago to pay athletes for their hard work by having fans invest in their progress.  The platform showcases athletes’ skills as well as the challenges they are working towards — all of which is stored on the blockchain.  Using NFT’s to tokenize the athlete’s image, the platform’s community of peers help generate liquidity for the athlete’s token so that when the athlete completes a challenge, they are awarded with an NFT. 

Victor, a former collegiate athlete himself, came up with the idea a few years ago when he was struggling with chronic pain. “I was bedridden and not doing any shenanigans,” he said.  One morning, as he struggled to get out of bed, Victor thought about how much easier it would be if someone was dependent on him getting out of bed—as though they had money on it.  “There is more incentive when other people are involved in what you want to do.”  He became fascinated with the idea of incentivizing activity and followed this concept “down the rabbit hole,” as he put it. Fast forward a year and Victor had the full vision of Shenanigan – a platform to get athletes the right kind of incentives to generate money and make them better athletes.  He began building Shenanigan, which today has over 10 part/full time contributors and over 1000 community members.

For More Than Just Athletes

Victor assured me that Shenanigan is for more than just athletes, or “dappletes” as they’re known in the decentralized world.  “We want everyone from contributors, fans, streamers, to someone just wanting to learn, to feel immersed within our environment.”  The best way to learn about how to engage with this community is to visit Shenanigan’s Discord page.  Victor encouraged Panvala community members to set a personal challenge for themselves (run 5 miles, do a week of handstands, etc.) and post it in the “Did a thing” channel on Discord once the task is complete to earn cred in the community (Shenanigan uses SourceCred, explained below).  You can also keep an eye out for community updates and new campaigns to participate in!

Launch Coming Soon!

Shenanigan will officially launch at the end of May, and you can learn more about their plans for the future on their website, follow them on twitter, and check out community updates on their Substack.

Thanks to Victor from Shenanigan for bringing this project to fruition and sharing it with the Panvala League community!