Sorare is a fantasy football platform developed by Nicolas Julia and Adrien Montfort in 2018. The platform enables players to buy, sell, trade, and manage a virtual team using digital player cards on the Ethereum blockchain.
Sorare makes money by the issuance and sale of new NFT playing cards on its platform, with auction prices starting at around 0.004 ETH. The final price an NFT sells for is determined by the scarcity of the card and the player featured on the card.
Sorare increases revenue and profit potential by minting new NFTs on Starknet, where transactions are bundled to reduce the cost per minted card.
Origin story
Sorare is a fantasy football platform developed by Nicolas Julia and Adrien Montfort in 2018.
The platform enables players to buy, sell, trade, and manage a virtual team using digital player cards on the Ethereum blockchain.
In late 2017, Julia and Montfort discovered NFTs which enabled the creation of scarce digital items.
The allure of NFTs struck a very personal chord with Julia, who noted that:
“We as human beings have been collecting things for centuries in the physical space. With NFTs, there is now the possibility of collecting something digital.”
Sorare is a fantasy football game where NFT collectibles are based on real-world football players and clubs.
Securing licensing deals with these clubs was a boon for the co-founders, especially when one considers that Sorare was an unproven start-up operating in an industry shrouded in misconception and complexity.
To play the game, participants need to own NFT cards which range in abundance from limited to rare, super rare, and unique.
These cards are acquired via packs sold by the company or on a secondary marketplace by owners who auction them off.
The ability to use NFT collectibles in a competitive environment is what differentiates Sorare from similar platforms.
Users can join a variety of different leagues, including those designed for rookie players or region-focused tournaments.
On game day, the user assembles a team of five with points awarded based on the real-world performance of each player.
The team that receives the most points is the winner and may themselves be awarded with Ether or rare cards.
Sorare makes money by the issuance and sale of new NFT playing cards on its platform.
While the cost of minting new NFTs for thousands of players might be considered prohibitive, Sorare runs on the Ethereum L2 network Starknet.
This allows the company to bundle many transactions together and reduce the cost per minted card.
Playing cards can be purchased in a few different ways:
New signings – where cards have been minted by Sorare and listed for sale without any previous owners. These cards are sold in an auction system, with prices starting at around 0.004 ETH or approximately $16. How much the company makes from minting new NFTs is determined by their scarcity and to a lesser extent, the player who is featured on the card.
Transfer market – where players purchase from other players on a secondary NFT marketplace. At the time of writing, Sorare does not make any money in this space. The company even covers the gas fee and, in some cases, has reduced the fee to zero to improve the user experience.
Direct offers – new cards can also be acquired by approaching other players directly and making sending them an offer on one of their team members. Sorare does not yet have plans to charge a fee for facilitating this transaction.
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A Merkle tree is a data structure encoding blockchain data more efficiently and securely. The Merkle tree is one of the foundational components of a Blockchain protocol.
The nothing-at-stake problem argues that validators on a blockchain with a financial incentive to mine on each fork are disruptive to consensus. Potentially, this makes the system more vulnerable to attack. This is a key problem that makes possible underlying blockchain protocols, based on core mechanisms like a proof-of-stake consensus, a key consensus system, that together the proof-of-work make up key protocols like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
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An Application Binary Interface (ABI) is the interface between two binary program modules that work together. An ABI is a contract between pieces of binary code defining the mechanisms by which functions are invoked and how parameters are passed between the caller and callee. ABIs have become critical in the development of applications leveraging smart contracts, on Blockchain protocols like Ethereum.
A Proof of Stake (PoS) is a form of consensus algorithm used to achieve agreement across a distributed network. As such it is, together with Proof of Work, among the key consensus algorithms for Blockchain protocols (like the Ethereum’s Casper protocol). Proof of Stake has the advantage of security, reduced risk of centralization, and energy efficiency.
Proof-of-Activity (PoA) is a blockchain consensus algorithm that facilitates genuine transactions and consensus amongst miners. That is a consensus algorithm combining proof-of-work and proof-of-stake. This consensus algorithm is designed to prevent attacks on the underlying Blockchain.
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A Blockchain Business Model is made of four main components: Value Model (Core Philosophy, Core Value and Value Propositions for the key stakeholders), Blockchain Model (Protocol Rules, Network Shape and Applications Layer/Ecosystem), Distribution Model (the key channels amplifying the protocol and its communities), and the Economic Model (the dynamics through which protocol players make money). Those elements coming together can serve as the basis to build and analyze a solid Blockchain Business Model.
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BAT or Basic Attention Token is a utility token aiming to provide privacy-based web tools for advertisers and users to monetize attention on the web in a decentralized way via Blockchain-based technologies. Therefore, the BAT ecosystem moves around a browser (Brave), a privacy-based search engine (Brave Search), and a utility token (BAT). Users can opt-in to advertising, thus making money based on their attention to ads as they browse the web.
Uniswap is a renowned decentralized crypto exchange created in 2018 and based on the Ethereum blockchain, to provide liquidity to the system. As a cryptocurrency exchange technology that operates on a decentralized basis. The Uniswap protocol inherited its namesake from the business that created it — Uniswap. Through smart contracts, the Uniswap protocol automates transactions between cryptocurrency tokens on the Ethereum blockchain.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
