Ethereum-based trading card game Parallel hosted its first-ever Parallel League Championship esports competition over the weekend, with professional Hearthstone player Jaromír “Jarla” Vyskočil taking home first prize, bagging himself $100,000 in the process. And the popular crypto-infused game announced some big news along the way.
The two-day event, hosted at the HyperX Arena in Las Vegas, saw 16 top Parallel players face off with $250,000 on the line. This came after players fought for qualification via a six-month competitive league, where they earned points through in-game tournaments, ladder matches, major tournaments, and more.
On the first day, Parallel released a reveal trailer for its upcoming third-person extraction shooter, announcing the game to be called Parallel: Sanctuary. Previously codenamed Project Tau Ceti, the game is being built on B3, a layer-3 gaming network on Base—Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 network.
By the end of the day Sunday, there were only four competitors left. Set to battle it out were the mysterious Sparkling, former Hearthstone pro Jimon, Colombian player Zeliaser, and Jarla. The ultimate champion had the most extensive esports background of the final four, finishing fifth in the 2022 Hearthstone World Championship.
All of this was in the pursuit of the Parallel Championship trophy, which plays a vinyl record of the game’s theme tune, according to gaming influencer Jake Lucky, who was at the event.
On the second and final day, Parallel Studios announced that it would release a mobile app for its trading card game—GG’s 2023 game of the year—on March 18 for both iOS and Android. It’s currently available via Windows PC.
Once the games started, Zeliaser took out Sparkling in an elimination match before Jarla got a clean 3-0 sweep against Jimon. This led to a deciding match between Zeliaser and Jimon for who would make it to the final against Jarla, with the Colombian taking a 3-1 victory.
Jarla’s domination continued with another clean sweep in the final over Zeliaser, with the Hearthstone pro taking home $100,000 for himself. It wasn’t all bad news for Zeliaser though, as $150,000 was spread amongst the runners-up at the weekend competition.
Parallel is a trading card game that made its way into open beta in February 2024, later launching onto the Epic Games Store. Soon, Parallel Studios started its esports push as it looked to bring players of Hearthstone, Magic: The Gathering, and other long-running competitive card games over to the crypto title.
Notably, Hearthstone pro and the game’s third-largest streamer at the time, Thijs “Thijs” Molendijk, announced that he would support the game. The move led to controversy within the Hearthstone community, as fans of Blizzard’s hit card game called him a sellout for supporting a crypto game—but he defended Parallel and the blockchain gaming model.
Thijs also played in the Prime Championship, placing 9th-12th—which the pro claims has only made him hungrier to keep competing. And he’ll have chances, with Parallel Studios committing another $1 million in total prize money to the upcoming second season of the Parallel League beginning this Thursday, with $2 million planned for a third season that’ll come in 2026.
Edited by Andrew Hayward