What is Chiliz and what is the CHZ coin used for?

Chiliz is a crypto project that builds blockchain tools for sports teams and their fans, and CHZ is its coin. Its best-known product is the fan token, a club-branded token that gives holders a say in small club decisions and access to perks. Fans mostly use these tokens through Socios.com, an app founded by Chiliz CEO Alexandre Dreyfus that launched in 2018.

What is Chiliz Chain?

Chiliz Chain is the project's own layer 1 blockchain. According to its documentation, it is a fork of BNB Smart Chain, which itself comes from an Ethereum client, so it works with Ethereum tools such as MetaMask and Hardhat.

It uses Proof of Staked Authority, a mix of proof of authority and proof of stake. A limited group of validators with the most stake behind them take turns producing blocks. Chiliz's docs say this allows quicker blocks and lower fees, at the cost of some decentralization.

Fan tokens were moved from an older Chiliz chain to the current Chiliz Chain by September 2023. As of October 2026, the docs also list fan token contract addresses on Solana and Base.

What is the Chiliz coin used for?

CHZ has three main uses on Chiliz Chain, per the docs:

• paying gas to deploy or use smart contracts
• moving tokens between Chiliz Chain and other networks such as Ethereum
• staking or delegating to validators to secure the network

CHZ is also the usual way to buy fan tokens in the Socios.com app. Under what Chiliz calls Tokenomics 2.0, new CHZ is issued each year, starting at 8.8 percent and falling over time to a floor of 1.88 percent. Most of that goes to validators and stakers. Most gas fees are burned, similar to Ethereum's fee model, which offsets some of the new supply.

What are fan tokens on Socios?

A fan token is a digital token tied to one club. Chiliz's docs describe them as finite assets built on Chiliz Chain, following a standard called CAP-20 that works like Ethereum's ERC-20. Before a 2026 migration they could only be held in whole units, and now they can be split into fractions. Exchanges carried out contract upgrades for tokens such as PSG and BAR in May 2026, with balances unchanged, Bitso said.

According to Finder, holders can:

• vote in club polls, such as on kit designs or a locker room message
• enter draws for tickets, memorabilia or meetings with players
• earn tokens through in-app games

Finder counts more than 100 teams across football, basketball, motorsport, esports and other sports. Votes cover minor matters, not how a club is run. Many Socios features have not been open to US residents. Cointelegraph reported in April 2025 that Chiliz met the SEC's crypto task force and planned to re-enter the US around the 2026 World Cup, after leaving in 2022. Before buying any club-branded token, check you are using the official app, since fake versions are a common trick covered in common crypto scams.