In a massive September 9 announcement, the blockchain-based fantasy football project Sorare has officially partnered with Spanish football league La Liga.
The event was streamed live on Twitch where ambassador superstars Samuel Eto’o and Patrick Kluivert were hosts.
Aujourd’hui @LaLiga annonce un partenariat unique avec @SorareHQ 🔥
J’étais présent au lancement et j’ai eu la chance de découvrir le monde des #NFT et comment #Sorare est en train de créer une connection entre fans et joueurs à travers un jeu de fantasy football!⚽️ pic.twitter.com/GYfpIhHE6j
They have onboarded all 20 La Liga teams’ player cards onto the platform with notable teams including Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Athletico Madrid. There are now over 200 teams on the platform.
La Liga is one of the best leagues in the world, home to some of the most exciting clubs and footballers on Earth. We are very proud that they have chosen Sorare to enter the world of NFTs. We are looking forward to working together in the years ahead.
CEO Nicolas Julia
This news follows other recent news that users on Sorare grew over 900% since the start of 2021. The growth has been helped by the popularity of Ethereum, which has seen thousands of NFT projects using its blockchain utility framework.
The Sorare game is very similar to Fantasy Premier League, or Football Manager, but with some slight differences:
You own the players’ cards on the blockchain, which can be traded with other managers worldwide
Your players score points from real life games across 35 leagues and competitions
Gamers spend $100b+ yearly buying game items they don't own, can't trade, can't use freely. NFTs will change this for good. You should have the same level of freedom in the digital space & the physical one.#OwnYourGame
A collection of 101 Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) non-fungible tokens sold for almost US$25 million at auction this week, underlining the insanity of an out-of-control NFT market that topped US$5 billion in overall sales last month.
What an historic moment for the club: the @Sothebys auction of 101 Bored Apes has closed at over $24m. Congratulations and THANK YOU to the whole ape community. To the buyer, I think we speak for everybody when we say: WELCOME TO THE CLUB. ☠️🦍⛵️ pic.twitter.com/NKxHekC0ny
The exact total of US$24.4 million paid for the BAYC collection translates to an average price of US$241,515 per NFT, smashing Sotheby’s pre-sale estimate of $12-18 million for the lot.
A second lot of 101 Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC) NFTs – digital dogs designed as companions for the apes (see video below) – sold for US$1,835,000.
#AuctionUpdate 101 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs just sold for $24.4 million and 101 Bored Ape Kennel Club NFTs achieved $1.8 million in our Ape in! auction – the most significant #BAYC sale to date. Congrats to all the apes out there 🐵🐶 pic.twitter.com/e7UghlgtKy
The digital apes have garnered a runaway cult following among the cryptocurrency community, attracting celebrity collectors such as NBA superstar Steph Curry, the NFL’s Dez Bryant, and musicians including electronic duo the Chainsmokers and rapper/entrepreneur Jermaine Dupri. BAYCs have also been the subject of a feature in The New Yorker magazine.
Single Bored Ape NFT Sells For New Record Price of $2.9 Million
This week’s auction drew largely positive support from the BAYC and broader NFT community on Twitter. Sotheby’s also reported interest from traditional art collectors who are “eager to learn” about the new art category.
We actually have a number of other NFT auctions already in the works and have been developing a long-term NFT strategy since [the first two quarters of 2021].
Michael Bouhanna, co-head of digital art, Sotheby’s
Last month, Crypto News Australia reported that a single BAYC token fetched the equivalent of US$1.29 million on OpenSea. Earlier this week, however, a single Bored Ape NFT sold for a new record US$2.9 million to the creators of The Sandbox, an upcoming Ethereum-based open-world metaverse game.
The Sandbox has foreshadowed a partnership with Bored Ape Yacht Club and plans to turn the illustrations into playable 3D avatars that owners can use within the game.
The three Bored Ape NFT drops so far have collectively generated more than US$777 million worth of trading volume, according to data aggregator CryptoSlam.
As the NFT game industry continues to boom, independent games have sprung up all over the place, boasting the trending play-to-earn mechanism players are fired up for.
INFBundle
Perform daily tasks such as fighting sea monsters while competing with other players to earn INF tokens. Players make a profit in helping the INFBundle hunt the strongest beasts of the deep sea.
Use INF tokens to get premium characters to boost your profits; players can buy and sell treasure chests in the shop and NFT marketplace.
The INF Pack has two modes: solo (one character) and line-up (seven characters of each class). Players can purchase characters on the NFT marketplace, treasure chests, or by directly buying them from other players.
My Pet Social
My Pet Social is a social network for gaming NFTs to increase their exposure by sharing them on the network for all to see. The aim is to generate more profit from gaming NFTs owned by players. The platform will be running on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), giving the community the power to connect with players and creators from all other platforms.
🔔 IDO Announcement!
We are excited to launch our first IDO on @Oxbull5 🚀
IDO Details: 🗓 September 11th • Total Hardcap: 1450 BNB • IDO rate per BNB 1.860.000 • Listing price per BNB 1.550.000 • 40% at TGE • 30% monthly
The platform will host a game ecosystem where other projects can sell their games among those of My Pet Social. For NFT creators, a feature has been added where fans can tip their favourite creators in MPS, their native token.
By working with major NFT issuer platforms, MPS can generate profits for users by staking their NFTs.
NFT Play
Crypto Magic War is the first product of NFT Play ecosystem, a play-to-earn NFT RPG Game hosted on BSC.
Players fight for legendary weapons and use magic in combination with the four elements to battle it out. Players’ assets, or NFTs, are minted according to ERC-721 standard, which can be traded on the proprietary marketplace.
The mission is to “create a more favourable environment for players to experience relaxing entertainment every day while it steers players in rich opportunities”, according to the official Medium page. The ecosystem will integrate multiple products, including games.
The IDO will have 1000 lucky winners sharing US$8,000 worth of NFP token (US$8/each). Interested persons must complete eight entries to be eligible for whitelist winners. All registered participants can take place in the IDO, which will be based on first-come-first-served rules until all US$150,000 worth of NFP is sold out on NFT-Starter & Unicrypt platform, ending September 18.
On September 8, a bug was found on the NFT marketplace OpenSea that destroyed at least 42 NFTs worth around US$100,000, as reported by Nick Johnson, lead developer of Ethereum Name Server (ENS).
42 Users Affected – 28.44 ETH Lost
Johnson discovered the bug when he tried to transfer an ENS name (which comes in the form of NFTs), titled rilxxlir.eth, to one of his personal accounts but instead it was randomly sent to an unused burn address.
The NFT ended up in an address no one uses and thus was lost forever. Despite the fact that the bug was reported and patched up by OpenSea, Johnson started receiving reports regarding at least 32 other transactions from 21 users who were similarly affected, with losses totalling 28.44 ETH, or US$100,000 at the time. OpenSea stated that Johnson was the only affected user of the bug.
A frantic call to @OpenSea later, it transpires I was the first and apparently only victim of a bug introduced to their transfer page in the past 24 hours, which affected all ERC721 transfers to ENS names. Ownership of rilxxlir.eth is now permanently burned.
The bug has since been patched, and while Johnson said that the rilxxlir.eth NFT didn’t have monetary value, it did have historical value as the first ENS name ever registered.
NFTs Skyrocketing in OpenSea
NFTs are exploding in popularity more than ever, especially at OpenSea, which has become the leading platform for content creators to expose and auction their artworks and digital collectibles. On March 19, the protocol raised US$23 million in a Series A funding round as an attempt to expand its operation.
However, there are some risks as the popularity of DeFi and NFTs increases. As Crypto News Australia reported last month, several OpenSea users were victims of phishing attacks from scammers posing as support staff on the Discord server.
A new era of blockchain-based fantasy sports is emerging, pioneered by Sorare, a fantasy game of football where players buy, sell, trade and manage a virtual team with digital player cards.
NFT Football Trading Platform Sorare
According to Sorare data, at the start of the year there were 3055 users owning at least one NFT; that number has since risen to over 30,553 users, a 900% increase.
Headquartered in Paris, France, the company has recently raised over €50 million to further establish and expand the game to a wider global audience. A notable investor in the Sorare project is Alexis Ohanian, Reddit co-founder and chairman, who has openly stated that NFTs will also be big for women’s sports.
Ethereum-Powered Ecosystem
Launched in 2019, the game uses Ethereum blockchain technology and layer-2 scaling through Starkware to achieve a seamless gaming experience which is fast and easy to play.
This technology will allow Sorare to scale its platform to support millions of users with very low gas fees and achieve 9,000 transactions per second.
The NFTs are minted and stored on the Ethereum blockchain through the ERC-721 SOR token. The wallet private key can be exported from the game into a wallet enabling the NFTs to be sold on other NFT marketplaces such as OpenSea or Rarible.
Some of the Unique cards (1 mint / colour brown) have sold for substantial sums, with the unique Ronaldo card, for example, selling for 52.885 ETH (approximately A$114k). Others such as Kylian Mbappé sold for A$88k back in November 2020.
WOW! The Cristiano Ronaldo 2020/21 Unique Card just sold for €84,409.08 (52.885 ETH)! 🚀 Huge congratulations to the proud owner, who also has the previous season's Unique CR7! 🔥🔥https://t.co/RgyL8HzXY4
Other than the collectible aspect, 99% of NFTs have no utility and no use other than for social profile avatars, or to sell on to the next person.
Sorare and other platforms such as Axie Infinity have re-invented the usefulness of NFTs, allowing you to actually use them in competitions to earn rewards.
Nice to be able to put 4 teams out again on @SorareHQ no room for J.Russell (DNP?) Hradecky, Ordets and Cervantes (DNP?) at present! Fingers crossed for a prize or two 🎁 #Sorarepic.twitter.com/Sm8kXwk3x3
Cards can also be bought and sold in the player auctions, and direct manager-to-manager exchanges for cards or ETH.
Sorare player auctions example
Some managers are flipping cards to try to make a profit, utilising their football knowledge to buy players who they think will do well and then selling them once they post good scores.
The NFTs can also be used in external side games such as SorareMega, where you can also enter a team into competitions. This allows the NFTs to be used across multiple platforms in the future, only adding to their utility.
Sorare Mega NFT competition platform
Projects like Sorare have been largely flying under the radar, and with a flurry of new NFT projects set to launch in the next 12 months we could see blockchain tokens become the new standard when it comes to fantasy sports through 2022.
Solana (SOL) will host three new NFT games on its blockchain where players can compete and trade with NFTs.
The gaming industry is in the midst of a growth spurt and is evolving along with the technology. With nearly US$24.8 billion generated to date, 2021 is already close to surpassing 2020’s full-year revenue (US$30 billion) and on track to overtake 2019 (US$43.6 billion) as the highest-grossing year ever for commercial gaming.
With the rise of the blockchain gaming industry, people can actually earn for time spent in the digital universe. For individuals looking to play some games while earning crypto and NFTs, this is quite appealing. The expanding Solana (SOL) blockchain is now playing host to three new NFT games.
Star Atlas
Star Atlas is setting its sights on the strategy genre where players explore space, fight for territories and use other dynamics to dominate the “grand strategy game”.
Welcome to the final frontier. Welcome to Star Atlas.
The full Teaser Trailer offers you a glimpse into a vast cosmic metaverse of the future. ✨
Players can also mine resources in the digital universe which they can sell in both in- and outside marketplaces.
Game assets are divided into four pillars, with ATLAS and POLIS being the monetary tokens. POLIS is the governance token where players have a say in the fate of the metaverse and the rules governing it, and ATLAS is the payment token for monetary exchange.
Planets are divided into parcels that can be owned and traded. These land parcels allow payers to reap a land tax, which is similar to staking the coin. In-game items like ships and their components can also be bought and sold on the secondary NFT marketplace with Solana-supported currencies.
Aurory
Aurory will be another gaming platform based on the play-to-earn mechanism. The platform wants players from all over the world to discover blockchain use cases in a fun and educational way.
Aurory will use an SPL token as the core of its gaming ecosystem in both solo and multiplayer modes, but also in its marketplace. The 2D animation side scroller has multiple modes that allow players to earn NFTs when defeating creatures in the single-player mode. The NFTs can then be used in multiplayer mode wherein other NFTs can be earned by battling.
Each time players complete a quest, they gain some tokens that will be usable to play multiplayer games or to buy items in the marketplace.
Genopets
Genopets is an innovative game where users can create a Genopet or “digital familiar”, which is an NFT connected with your fitness data. Genopets is the first Move-to-Earn MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) where players that stay active evolve with their pets.
$KI tokens are generated through data collected by fitness devices and are used in battle, to craft valuable items, and to upgrade your Genopet’s style and performance. Players can earn by trading items and move-sets on the NFT marketplace as well as battling one another in play-for-keeps mini-games.
Solana is currently the seventh-largest crypto by market cap and has seen massive growth and utilisation in the past few months, raising US$450 million to challenge Ethereum for the dapp and DeFi market. In a related event, Australia’s Power Ledger has moved from Ethereum to Solana, favouring its higher throughput and speed.
Just when you thought the world of NFT gaming couldn’t get any weirder or more lucrative for the least possible effort, crypto’s latest trend is playing games before they’re even built.
Developers used to take sometimes years to build a game before releasing it, then cashed in by selling in-game items and raking in the profits. But crypto degens have flipped the script by selling the in-game items first and then hoping somebody else will build the game.
Yet even without guarantees of any future utility, these items and artifacts are selling for millions – US$211 million over the past seven days, in fact, according to data from NFT-Stats.
Dom Hofmann, Loot creator. Source: vox.com
On August 27, Vine co-founder Dom Hofmann described the Loot project as “randomised adventurer gear”, stating there were only 8,000 bags of said gear. Of course, all 8,000 were snapped up within four hours after Hofmann provided a link to an Ethereum contract, which members of the crypto community used to create the bags and send them to themselves. It was free to claim the bags but they had to pay transaction fees.
Each bag contains eight items for a supposed adventurer, a few wearables and a weapon. They’re all named as in any mythological game, with descriptors such as “Dragonskin Armour” or “Platinum Ring of Anger”.
Not Real, Not Digital, Just White Text on a Black Background
But these are not real bags, nor are they even digital ones. They are simply white text on a black background, saved as images and minted as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. They look like the reversed panel in the tweet below:
LOOT
– randomized adventurer gear – no images or stats. intentionally omitted for others to interpret – no fee, just gas – 8000 bags total
Back in March, Hofmann created Blitmap, which he described as a “community-created fantasy universe”, a blueprint for what Loot would become. Since Blitmap’s launch, Hofmann considered other ways to promote the creation of blockchain-based art and communities to surround them. One idea was to let people mint NFTs based on his random-item generator for free, just to see what would happen. He would not provide any artwork or any instructions on what to do with them. And he would give these “bags” of items away for free, minus the transaction fees required by the Ethereum network.
The 7,777 bags Hofmann offered up for minting were all snapped up more or less instantly. Over the next five days Loot bags were resold for US$46 million, and had a market cap of US$180 million. On September 1, the cheapest Loot bag could be had for about US$20,000. That price more than doubled overnight to US$46,000.
Game developers can build a game or multiple games around these collectibles, assigning items that match the attributes in the bags. So anyone who owns the bags may be able to access such items within these yet-to-be-created games.
No Secure Future But Plenty of Value
Despite the lack of any secure future, the bags continue to attract value. At time of writing the cheapest price for a Loot bag was 12.4 ETH (US$48,360), while the highest sale yet was for just shy of US$1 million – for a single bag.
With Loot now on the loose, the NFT gaming bonanza shows no signs of slowing. One of the other frontrunners in the space, Axie Infinity, saw its token, axie infinity (AXS), skyrocket over 50 percent in a single week last month.
This is an independent review of Sorare, a blockchain-based fantasy football game where fans can collect player cards, trade them and use them to compete for prizes.
Launched in 2019, Sorare is a pioneering fantasy game of football where users manage a virtual team of digital player cards (NFTs) which they can trade with other managers and enter into competitions to compete for prizes.
The game uses Ethereum blockchain technology to create and transfer the NFTs as tokens on the blockchain as proof of ownership. It also uses the latest Ethereum layer-2 technology called Starkware to help scale the transactions and keep the gas fees low
Headquartered in Paris, France, the company has recently raised over €50 million to further establish and expand the game to a wider global audience.
The project is backed by some famous footballers including André Schürrle, Gerard Piqué, Antoine Griezmann and others. The CEO of Sorare, Nicolas Julia, explains more about the project in a recent interview with Bloomberg.
Main Features
NFT football card marketplace – buy, sell and trade football player cards as NFTs.
Fantasy football game – follow your players’ scores in real life (just like Fantasy Premier League). Win new cards and ETH as rewards for performing well in competitions against other managers.
How does Sorare work?
In simple terms, the player cards are created each season by Sorare (minted on the Ethereum blockchain as NFTs). Users then place bids on the cards in an auction to buy them (similar to eBay bidding). The winner then owns that card on-chain as an NFT and can then either hold, sell, trade or use them in competitions to win prizes.
Sorare’s new player card auctions example
Along with the primary market (newly minted cards), there is a secondary market where users can list their cards for sale with an asking price.
Sorare’s manager player card sales example
For more about the gameplay, skip to the How To Play section below.
Or, get stuck now in and Sign up for free<< Use this link to get 1 free card when you buy 4!
First mover advantage – this is the first fantasy football game of its kind merging the worlds of football, blockchain and fantasy sports.
Extensive financial backing – recent fund raising efforts can see them scale operations into 2022.
Blockchain-based – cards are owned as NFTs as proof of ownership which allows for extra utility with third party applications in the future.
Cards have utility – unlike CryptoPunks and other computer-generated NFTs, the football cards are “soft linked” to real-life players which gives them added attraction and value as collectibles.
Collectible cards – it’s great to see how passionate some people are about collecting these cards, especially early mints and special shirt numbers.
Working platform and ecosystem – the web platform is well-built and all features function very well especially the points scoring system which i consider to be an improvement on FPL.
Plenty of room to grow – fantasy sports is a huge market and a record number of over 7,800,000 users have signed up to Fantasy Premier League this year. They have also hinted there might be more sports added in the future.
Scaling technology – the blockchain transaction fees (ETH Gas) are paid for by Sorare using StarkWare’s layer-2 scaling tech. Whereas most other NFT collections on open marketplaces, you’ll pay a tremendous amount on GAS fees when buying and selling.
Seemless experience – the highly technical elements of the blockchain are hidden from the users, allowing them to focus enjoying the game.
Ethereum investment – you inherently get exposure to cryptos as your cards are priced in ETH and if the price of ETH goes up, the relative estimated value of your cards goes up.
Cons:
Limited teams – so far only 150+ teams are available (Sorare is adding more teams very fast but there are not many EPL teams yet, which would be the main market). I would imagine they would struggle to get licences for all the teams, this could take a long time.
No mobile app yet – they are planning to launch one soon, however the mobile web app is usable in the meantime. The launch of the mobile app you would imagine would boost the number of users.
Confusing for beginners – in my opinion there are too many different types of cards can be confusing to beginners (Common, Limited, Rare, Super Rare, Unique). Along with that, I feel there are also too many types of competitions which is also confusing when picking players.
Cards are priced in ETH – this could be a pro or a con and is a big discussion. In simple terms, if the price of ETH goes up then we could see the game become unplayable for new players as card prices shoot through the roof, and they are unable to put a decent team together.
Card supply unknown – nothing stops Sorare from creating more card types which could devalue your current cards. There is no public release schedule and there are clauses in the terms which enable them to do whatever they want.
Can’t withdraw to bank account – current Ramp only allows deposits and not withdrawals. To withdraw you need an external wallet provider and exchange linked to your bank.
Addictive game traits – fantasy games can become addictive and with the ability to buy cards directly with a Credit Card, this could be lead those of a gambling persuasion astray.
Getting started is simple, Sign up for free on the website with your email address.
Once you’ve verified your email and logged in, you can select five free Common cards (white background).
Sorare Common cards example
You can then enter your free team into a competition from the main menu: select Play > Gameweek, then select Starter League Rookie. Select your five players and click Confirm.
Sorare players competition selection example
When the real-life football matches have finished, your players will get points and if they do well you may even win a free card!
Sorare players performance results example
Once you have got the beginner team done, to play in the other competitions you will need to purchase additional cards. To do this you’ll have to deposit some Ethereum (ETH) into your Sorare account.
Types of Cards:
There are currently five types of NFT cards with varying degrees of scarcity, and specific cards are required to enter specific competitions.
Common – Unlimited (these are the free cards given when you sign up)
Limited – Only 1000 minted per season
Rare – Only 100 minted per season
Super Rare – Only 10 minted per season
Unique – Only 1 minted per season
Competitions
There are currently eight types of competitions you can enter. The prizes vary, so check the competition prize info on the site.
Competition
Requirements
Prizes
Starter League Rookie
1 division, entering Common cards and 2 Rare Cards. Rare is required for Captain (scores double)
Top 3 Rare card, Everyone gets 1 Common just for entering
Global All Star
5 divisions entering all types of cards. Division 5 you can use Limited cards only.
Varies depending on division. Combination of cards and ETH.
Global Under 23
5 divisions entering all types of cards, under 23 age players only
Varies depending on division. Combination of cards and ETH.
Champion Europe
Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga and Ligue 1.
Varies depending on division. Combination of cards and ETH.
Champion America
Players from MLS, Liga MX, Brasileiro Série A, and the Superliga Argentina
Varies depending on division. Combination of cards and ETH.
Champion Asia
Players from K-League and J-League
Varies depending on division. Combination of cards and ETH.
Global Unique
1 division with only unique cards
ETH
Special Training
Send your unused players to the training ground to gain XP
Player XP bonus
Special Weekly
Special competitions
Varies
Sorare competitions comparison table
Bidding on Players
You can bid on new cards to bolster your squad of players. To do this, go to Market > New Card Auctions from the main menu.
Sorare player auction
From here you can place your bid. If someone else outbids you, the timer will reset to 1 minute; if under that, you will then have a chance to put in a higher bid. Once the timer ends, the card is transferred to the new owner.
Sorare bidding on a player example
Tip: Before you buy, check out the player on Sorare data to see if they have been playing, recent scores and typical purchase price ranges.
To participate in the player auctions, you’ll need some ETH in your account. There are two different ways to achieve this:
1) Direct purchase on the platform using credit card or bank account
To buy using your card, click the Blue button at the top right, then click ‘Ramp’ and follow the instructions.
The Ramp service supports 170+ countries (including Australia) and allows buying with credit/debit card or bank transfer. Typical fees are around 3%. You’ll be required to complete a KYC which involves taking a selfie with your mobile and submitting your drivers’ licence and proof of address. Verification is fast, typical approval within 5-10 minutes.
Sorare deposit funds by card
or 2) Deposit ETH via an external wallet
Use an external crypto wallet (such as MetaMask extension for the Brave web browser, which can connect you to the site easier for transfer of ETH back and forth).
If you don’t have any ETH, you can buy crypto from a popular crypto exchange and then send it to your MetaMask wallet. Another option is to create a Trust Wallet on your mobile and connect that using Wallet Connect.
Sorare deposit funds by Metamask
Beginner Tutorials
Be sure to watch the awesome Sorare beginner tutorials playlist by John Nellis, a seasoned expert in the space. Big thanks to John for validating all the information in this review.
Must read: We also have recently published a Beginners guide with some tips on how to play the game and win.
FAQ
Why can’t I sell my Common cards?
Common cards are given to you for free by the platform (starter pack players when you sign up and as rewards). This type of card cannot be bought or sold.
Why can’t I pick a captain for my competition?
Some competitions require a specific card type to select a captain. For example, the Starter League Rookie requires a Rare card to put up as captain.
Can you sell Common cards on OpenSea?
Common cards which you are given for free when you sign up cannot be traded, bought or sold.
Why won’t my cards show on Sorare Mega?
Common cards do not show on the Sorare Mega game. You’ll need Rare or above to play.
When the new 2022/2023season starts, do the previous season cards become useless?
Each season, new cards are released. There is a current season bonus of 5% if the card is from the current season, ie, your player will score 5% more points.
What happens if I lose my phone which has my 2-auth login on it?
If my player joins another team will they still score points?
For example, if Renato Sanches joins an English Premier League team from Portugal? The short answer is yes. The long answer is if a player leaves his real-world team and joins another team in a league that Sorare analyses from a data perspective, your card will continue to earn points.
If my player’s card is age 23, but the actual age of the player is 24, can I still enter it in the under 23 comps?
From Sorare discord: “Tomorrow is July 1. This means that only players that are 23 or under as of July 1, 2021, are eligible for the U23 tournaments. Starting Game Week 181, you will only be able to select players who are 23 or under starting July 1, 2021. We will also update the prize pools in time for GW181.”
Why can’t I see my cards on OpenSea? I’ve exported my private key to MetaMask and logged in.
tba
Is Sorare gambling, and could it be shut down by regulation?
This seems uncertain at the moment, as there isn’t a direct entry fee to enter the competitions (although there are card requirements). If betting companies adopt this “NFT free entry game” approach to start accepting cryptocurrencies, could we see the regulation change? It could be likely that they remove the ETH rewards as prizes completely. It could also be a possibility that the competition element of the game is run by an entirely different “co-owned” platform (such as One Shot League), which is financially regulated but still makes use of the cards you own.
How does the affiliate program work?
Click the ‘Invite Friends’ link in the main menu. Then copy that link and send it to a mate. When they sign up and buy five cards from the player auctions, you’ll both get a free limited card. Use this link to sign up if you don’t have one.
Additional notes and tips:
There is an awesome website, soraredata.com, which displays all the Sorare card data where you can scout new players.
Transfermarkt great website to check squads, players, stats.
Conclusions
For the millions of fantasy football players worldwide, it is truly a dream to see such a platform finally get developed where two popular worlds – crypto and fantasy sports – meet.
The Sorare user base has grown rapidly in 2021, to a reported 30,000 managers that own at least one NFT – so it is still very early considering how large the fantasy football market is on other platforms such as FPL with almost 8 million players.
Recent large capital raises should see a growth in the team, improvement of product and marketing efforts for onboarding and scaling.
The recent release of the new Limited cards (1000 mints / color yellow) which are more affordable for new managers, together with new leagues and clubs signing up should see plenty of action for the platform leading into the FIFA World Cup 2022.
In a move that counters the trend in most other major sports, from football to boxing to cricket, the US National Football League (NFL) has banned its teams from selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs) or sponsorships to cryptocurrency trading firms.
As reported on sports website The Athletic on September 3, clubs are restricted from selling “advertisements for specific cryptocurrencies, initial coin offerings, other cryptocurrency sales or any other media category as it relates to blockchain [or] digital assets”, according to the NFL guidelines.
However, the policy does allow for sponsorships with companies that mainly provide investment advisory or fund management services related to cryptocurrency, along the lines of Grayscale Investments’ agreement with the New York Giants.
Rule Does Not Appear to Apply to Specific Players
Tom Brady with wife Gisele Bündchen. Source: Us magazine
Individual ventures seem to be exempt from the rule. For example, star quarterback Tom Brady has a joint stake in crypto derivatives exchange FTX with his Brazilian supermodel wife Gisele Bündchen, and he also owns an NFT platform in partnership with sports betting operator DraftKings. Brady’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers teammate Rob “Gronk” Gronkowski recently sold an NFT collection, while Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes released his own collection of NFTs on MakersPlace in March.
Russell Okung, first NFL player to be part-paid in bitcoin. Source: oldnorthbanter.com
Carolina Panthers lineman Russell Okung announced last December he would be getting half of his US$13 million salary paid in bitcoin. Okung timed his decision well, as the NFL had just capped the league’s salaries at US$180 million. Some suggest Okung is now the highest paid NFL player thanks to his crypto manoeuvre.
The NFL policy places it at odds with other major sports in the NFT space. The NBA has pursued a lucrative partnership with Dapper Labs’ NBA Top Shot dating back to May last year, and in July Major League Baseball launched its own NFT marketplace with Fanatics-owned Candy Digital.
The Athletic’s report does not disclose any negative feedback from players who have already participated with crypto firms, or whether they have been granted any form of immunity from the new ban.
Possible Reasons for the Ban
It has been suggested that teams are not permitted to sell NFTs because the league is developing its own strategy for sports digital trading cards and art. While other leagues have opened the floodgates for digital assets, the NFL is notoriously cautious with new commercial categories. For example, it trod very cautiously with gambling and alcohol promotions before eventually relaxing its restrictions.
In the case of cryptocurrency, the league currently only allows teams to align with companies that are a step removed from trading.
As the NFT space grows, more artists and content creators could move their works from Ethereum to Solana, the high-performance blockchain, due to the excessively high fees of the ETH network.
Ethereum is the largest NFT minting hub for now, though network congestion, slow transactions, high fees and other hurdles are prompting content creators to migrate to other NFT-supporting blockchains, and Solana seems to be the DeFi protocol picking up the most momentum for NFTs.
Take the example of a group called “Burnt Banksy”, which is building a blockchain platform on Solana called Burnt Finance. It all started when the group bought an original artwork from the otherwise anonymous English street artist known as Banksy for US$95,000 and resold it for US$400,000 on OpenSea, the leading decentralised NFT marketplace.
Innovative Features Make a Bull Case
While there are other platforms such as Polkadot, Binance Smart Chain and Cardano that offer scaling solutions with low gas fees, NFTs are growing faster on Solana than in other protocols.
One of the reasons is that Solana uses innovative features such as the cryptographic clock system called PoH (Proof of History), which manages to support 65,000 TPS (transactions per second) with a $0.0015 average fee per transaction.
Another reason that Solana is gaining momentum on the NFT market is that the level of competition is soaring on ETH-based platforms. It’s difficult to sustain businesses models on these platforms while also keeping pace with gas fees. Content creators with cheaper collections – around US$100 to US$500 raribles or collectibles – may expect Solana to stand out from ETH competition by offering cheaper NFTs thanks to Solana’s lower gas fees.
Other types of NFTs could thrive in Solana. Fractionalisation is a recent trend that’s blowing up now in the DeFi community. The idea is that you can buy a fraction of an NFT and receive exposure to it instead of paying for the complete piece, something that could work with Solana but wouldn’t with ETH’s current gas fees. For instance, if you want to buy a piece of a CryptoPunk for US$20, you would probably pay a similar amount for it in gas fees.
Solana’s NFT Marketplace Also Booming
Solanart is the protocol’s NFT marketplace, which recently registered an expanding transaction volume with over US$5 million in transactions in a single day.
Aaaaand we're at 92,610 SOL which is a little over $5,000,000 in daily trading volume now! Record broken again 🤯 C…can we make it to 100,000 SOL? 👀 https://t.co/BAIVSEoy5n
As the NFT industry grows, the crypto community is shifting its eyes to other potential protocols to build on, and Solana seems one of the preferred candidates. The ETH community, on the other hand, is looking to the rollout of ETH 2.0, which is expected to fix the network’s scaling challenges and gas fees.
