Digital trading card game Parallel is set to host its Parallel League Championship with a $250,000 prize pool up for grabs early next year, with the event set to take place on March 1-2, 2025 at the HyperX Arena in Las Vegas.

Parallel is an Ethereum-based card game that was named as GG’s best crypto game of 2023. This year, the game launched onto the Epic Games Store putting the game in front of 75 million monthly active users, as it began its esports push. Parallel offers players optional NFT trading cards, but they're not required to play the game.

This came in the form of the Parallel League, a six-month competitive league in which players battle to earn points through in-game tournaments, ladder matches, major tournaments, and more. The Parallel Championship is set to be the final event of this event series.

The top eight Parallel players will go head-to-head at the 650-person capacity HyperX Arena in Las Vegas. On the line is $250,000, with the winner taking home $100,000 all to themselves. Another $250,000 will be handed out in total to the winners of major and minor tournaments throughout the course of the in-progress Parallel League leading up to the finals.

Since opening in 2018, the HyperX Arena has gradually gained a reputation as one of the key esports venues in North America, hosting hundreds of events including the League of Legends All-Stars match in 2019.

"Our goal is to create the best esports scene in the trading card game world. Bringing the championship to HyperX is a big step in that direction" Parallel Studios co-founder and CEO Sascha Mojtahedi said in a statement provided exclusively to Decrypt’s GG.

A number of other crypto games have dipped their toes in the world of esports, hoping to bolster their respective competitive gaming communities.

This includes Solana-based hero shooter Nyan Heroes and 4v4 sports brawler Sparkball teaming up with esports giants to promote their respective game rollouts, as well as Ethereum card strategy game Apeiron hosting a esports championship with a $1 million prize pool.

Earlier this year, a number of well-known Hearthstone players—the most popular trading card video game—joined the Parallel ambassador program.

Most notably, Thijs Molendijk, an esports pro and well-known Hearthstone streamer, announced that he would be supporting the crypto game. He took to Twitter to explain that blockchain helps recreate the trading element of physical card games that Web2 games don’t deliver, since assets are locked within their own walled gardens.

But some Hearthstone fans weren’t happy, calling him a “sellout” and saying that it has damaged his reputation. Since then, Thijs has become an ambassador for Ubisoft’s recently launched NFT game Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles and continued to advocate for blockchain games.

Despite some pushback from gamers, Parallel has clearly set its eyes on being taken seriously in the esports world—and a $250,000 live championship is the next step.

Edited by Andrew Hayward