Fighting organization Karate Combat is going to be one Hedera layer 2 network called UP in the first quarter of 2025. This will allow the league to license its “Up Only Gaming” technology that powers its app to other sports, leagues and projects – perhaps even meme- coins.
Karate Combat, which includes MMA legends Bas Rutten and Georges St-Pierre ambassadorshas grown in popularity in recent years, partly due to its pushing into crypto and its token-hungry user base. Karate Combat’s mobile and web app allows users to bet KARATE tokens for upcoming battles. Bet correctly and you win KARATE tokens; Make the wrong bet and you lose nothing.
The crypto-powered app, in addition to entertaining battles by professional athletes and crypto influencers, has fueled the recent success of Karate Combat, its pseudonymous co-founder.Alone larpingtold Declutter in an interview. And now the organization wants to let other projects get a piece of the pie.
“Over the past year we’ve had a fair amount of demand from other sports, leagues, teams, esports teams, poker tournaments, gambling products, fantasy sports and startups to license or copy what we’ve built,” Onlylarping shared. Declutter. “We are already very motivated to spread ‘Up Only Gaming’ beyond Karate Combat.”
There are currently 20 to 30 projects planned to launch on the company’s upcoming Layer-2 network, the co-founder said, and Karate Combat still hopes to get several more on board before the L2 goes live.
For now, the pool of projects that can use the UP network is wide open, Onlylarping said, even inviting meme coins to join the party. However, he added that there could be a future where a major partner asks for exclusivity in a category.
Apps launched with Up Only Gaming record transactions on the UP layer-2 network. However, this does not mean that these projects have to launch a token on UP or Hedera. Instead, users can deposit other tokens into the app, and the app will create a synthetic version to use.
“We’re not trying to keep an eye on this thing,” he said. “We are not trying to force every sport in the world to launch a token on UP. It’s just never going to happen,” Onlylarping said Declutter. “But if people want to have the software for free, and they want a subsidy, and their users want to share, and all these things, then their users have to use UP while they play.”
UP aims to launch a token next year with a portion of the total supply allocated to a grant program aimed at helping early builders on the network.
The Karate Combat co-founder hopes the network of games will share player bases similar to what we’ve seen in the game recently. Telegram’s gaming ecosystem because mini-apps entice users to play other games for in-game rewards. For this reason, the team hopes that UP can help bring more attention to the sport of Karate Combat.
Additionally, 30% of UP’s total token supply will be allocated to flow back into KARATE token holders’ wallets. How exactly this will work is yet to be determined, but the team is looking into both staking and boosting the app rewards.
The launch of UP will also bring significant improvements to the backend of the Karate Combat app. Currently, the app limits gameplay to a 48-hour period and prevents players from boarding during Karate Combat events, due to the on-chain snapshot system it uses. The update will log every prediction, battle and token reward all on-chain, which will make the whole experience more agile and remove the 48-hour limitation.
What may surprise some is that this is all being built on top of Hedera, which may have had a big impact spectacular debut in 2019 but lacks the name power of an Ethereum or a Solana. While Ethereum is currently home to a slew of layer 2 options and so-called appchains, UP will essentially be Hedera’s first L2 network.
Karate Combat’s choice to go with Herda is the result of a three-year business relationship with the HBAR Foundationexplains the co-founder. He said that while most other chains “didn’t really understand” Karate Combat’s vision, Hedera did.
“They really understood. Some people there fell in love with it, really supported us and convinced us to come to Hedera. It turned out fantastically well,” he says. “And when we started talking to the HBAR Foundation about what we wanted to do [with the layer-2 network]they have been very supportive.”
Karate Combat will release an open source library to help future projects trace their path on the Hedera network.
“It’s great to be a pioneer, but ultimately you want to be part of a category on CoinGecko,” Onlylarping told Declutter. “It would be great if we could build a category of tokens that look like Karate Combat. We are intrinsically motivated to do it. And we are intrinsically motivated to make this happen as quickly as possible.”
