Paris Saint Germaine, winners of nine of the past 11 French soccer championships, has become the first sporting club to operate as a validator for Chiliz Chain.

Announced on Feb. 22, Paris Saint Germaine (PSG) will provide validation services for Chiliz Chain. PSG has committed to reinvesting all revenues generated from validating the network into buying back PSG Fan Tokens to foster a “self-sustaining digital economy” benefiting users.

Chiliz pockets 20% of network transaction fees, with the remaining 80% going to network validators and delegates.

“These automated buy-backs, executed via smart contracts by the validator or through decentralized exchanges on the Chiliz Chain, are planned at set intervals to consistently bolster the club’s digital economy,” Chiliz said. “The buy-back program… ensures a significant part of revenue from club validators, through gas fees and supply inflation, is reinvested into the PSG Fan Token supply.”

Chiliz claims to host a $1B “SportsFi” ecosystem. Its flagship platform, Socios, enables users to purchase and trade “Fan Tokens” issued in partnership with leading sports clubs, including the $PSG token. Fan Token holders receive benefits including access to gated content, participation in voting club managerial decisions such as jersey designs, and exclusive merchandise offers.

“By becoming a validator on the Chiliz Chain, we’re not just embracing the future of web3 sports; we’re actively designing it so that we can have a more direct relationship with our fans through web3 experiences,” said Pär Helgosson, Head of Web3.

PSG and Chiliz will also co-host a web3 hackathon in its home Parc Des Princes stadium in Q3 2024. The initiative seeks to gather developers from France and abroad to innovate on new products leveraging Chiliz Chain and PSG Fan Tokens.

Chiliz initially launched on Ethereum in 2018, before deploying Chiliz Chain in October 2022, and following up with the launch of Chiliz Chain 2.0 last May. PSG became the first sporting club to partner with Chiliz and issue fan tokens in September 2018.

Chiliz  celebrated its sixth anniversary on Feb. 8. The platform hosts more than 1.9M previously active wallets and 75 officially licensed Fan Tokens, and has facilitated 18M votes cast towards more than 4,500 club polls.

Chiliz also said it recently updated its tokenomics model to introduce inflationary rewards for CHZ stakers alongside integrating EIP-1559 to debut a token burn mechanism.