Avalanche PlayEngine: A New Way to Discover Avalanche on Campus

What starts as a friendly fantasy football league becomes a hands-on introduction to Avalanche, where students set up wallets and earn real rewards on AVAX.

Crypto has always thrived in real life, from small meetups to packed community gatherings and IRL events that bring together crypto natives and newcomers alike. People show up to learn, network and connect with like minds and discuss the Web3 space.

For the past three years, Team1 has helped create those moments. Through meetups and community gatherings, they have introduced people to Avalanche, answered questions, and built genuine connections around the globe.

Avalanche PlayEngine was born as an experimental initiative from Team1 to facilitate campaigns that extend beyond a few days. Instead, these ongoing initiatives continuously onboard new members within a specific region.

What is Avalanche PlayEngine?

Avalanche PlayEngine is a first-of-its-kind fantasy football competition that takes place at The University Of Ilorin, North Central, Nigeria. It brings together a lively community of football lovers and curious minds from all around the campus to explore Avalanche. It makes use of Core Wallet as the main channel to receive rewards on AVAX.

The campaign runs in seasons, with each season lasting a semester (approximately four months). It makes use of one of the most popular IRL football leagues on campus, and throughout the tournament, users gather at every match to watch and participate in the fantasy contest for a chance to win cash prizes.

The Back Story

It all started way back at the start of 2025, when the Adoption movement was in full swing.

Members of the Avalanche Nigeria community (Team1NG) kicked off their campus tour with a stop at the University of Ilorin. The visit helped introduce and amplify the early ideas behind the campaign, becoming the spark that set everything in motion.

A fantasy football competition was built around one of the most popular leagues within the campus. This brought together football fans across campus who signed up, downloaded Core Wallet, participated in the game and started to win cash prizes on AVAX over the weeks that followed. The campaign grew into a community of 600 plus members while retaining 300 plus active users participating in the fantasy competition.

With the growing community came a series of mini events and experiments that helped drive the adoption of Avalanche and showcase what’s possible. One notable example was a set of partnerships with six local campus businesses, where physical collectible cards were introduced as a way for about 120 participating consumers to redeem items from participating stores. This experiment quickly went viral across campus and drew attention from students and businesses alike. It served as an early step toward fostering onchain interactions between businesses and consumers, easing people into the concept by starting with something tangible before gradually moving toward digital experiences.

The campaign concluded with a grand final which brought the community members together to celebrate the conclusion of the league, fantasy and overall success of the campaign.

How It Works

Participation is open to everyone, and the game is pretty straightforward. If you’re tapped into the football league and can spot top players, the rest comes down to strategy and a bit of luck.

Registration

STEP 1: Head to the PlayEngine website to begin the sign-up process.
STEP 2: Sign up using your email or Google account.
STEP 3: Pick a username. This is the name that will appear on the global leaderboard and represent your progress.
STEP 4: Install the Core Wallet on your device.
STEP 5: Open Core Wallet and follow the prompts to create a new wallet.
STEP 6: Inside the wallet, locate the address labeled “C-Chain” and copy it.
STEP 7: Return to the PlayEngine website and paste your C-Chain wallet address when prompted.
STEP 8: Your account is now ready. All rewards you earn will be sent directly to your wallet.

Getting Familiar

Take a quick crash course on the league by exploring the website. You get access to all the teams, players, and stats from previous tournaments and season. This helps you identify the ballers a.k.a. the players who can earn you the most points possible.

You can also join the local community channels and group chats to fully immerse yourself by chatting with fans of the league across campus. You even get the chance to interact with the players themselves, gauge their confidence levels, encourage them, cheer them on, and stay connected to the action beyond match day.

Picking Your Team

Now it’s time to select your squad. Let’s see if all that research and studying will win you some cool prizes.

Head to the ‘Play Fantasy’ page on the website, here you can pick your squad of eleven players. The selection mechanism is simple and intuitive, it uses drop-down menus where you can tick the players you want to add to your squad. You can also see a 2D representation of your selected squad by switching the view toggle, this helps you analyse, share and perfect your selections before the games kick off.

It is important to select your squad before the deadline. The deadline is usually a few hours before the game kicks off and it’s actively communicated across the socials.

Engagement and Rewards

With your registration complete and your squad locked in, you’re officially ready to transition from the digital leaderboard to the stadium stands.

On match days, you have full access to attend the games in real life at the university stadium which is open to everyone. You get to watch all the matches and see the performances of various players including the ones you selected in your squad in real-time.

The matches are engaging, with plenty of opportunities to network, ask questions, and connect with the community.

If you’re still figuring out your wallet, someone will be on the ground to help you get started. Plus, there’s free Avalanche merch waiting for you and plenty of other activities to keep the energy high.

The Impact

A strong indicator of a successful campaign is the reaction that follows after it ends. After the conclusion of the four-month long campaign, PlayEngine still has a huge and active community behind it. The community started to ask: When is the next thing? When is the next league? When are the next restaurant collectibles coming?

What started as a simple Team1 meetup had grown into something much bigger. A play-to-earn fantasy football league followed, the restaurant collectibles experiment went viral across campus, and a series of other activities kept the community engaged along the way. By the time the grand final arrived, the campaign had built a lot of momentum and popularity. With that level of engagement, it was inevitable that interest grew and people were ready for the next thing.

In light of this, Avalanche PlayEngine was renewed for a second season with as much excitement and more rewards this time. Every aspect of the campaign was improved, the website was upgraded, new merchandise drops were introduced across campus, and relationships with previously partnered local businesses continued to grow.

Season 2 quickly proved the momentum was real. PlayEngine tripled its user base, reaching over 1,000 registered users and averaging around 730 active participants in the fantasy contest each week. What began as an experiment in long-form community onboarding has evolved into a thriving campus ecosystem, one that continues to introduce new users to Avalanche through something they already love.

Conclusion

Avalanche PlayEngine began as an experiment for longer, community-driven campaigns which could create a more effective path to Web3 onboarding. Over the span of 13 months, that experiment grew into a thriving campus community that introduced hundreds of students to Avalanche in a way that felt natural and engaging.

Across two successful seasons, the campaign attracted more than 1,000 users, distributed over $2,800 in prizes, and helped establish a growing merch and event culture around Avalanche on campus.

Now, PlayEngine is exploring its next chapter and could return for a potential third season, with the goal of raising the bar once again and continuing to expand the community.

If you’re curious about joining future campaigns, you can sign up on the PlayEngine website and get your account ready. You can also follow Avalanche PlayEngine on X to stay up to date with announcements, events, and upcoming seasons.

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