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Complete guide to Sorare, the fantasy football crypto game on Ethereum

Sorare: A complete guide to crypto fantasy football NFTs

Sorare is a crypto fantasy football game where you can buy and sell players in exchange for ETH

Do you love football and crypto? There is a way to combine these two passions. It’s called Sorare, a genuine crypto fantasy football game built on Ethereum! The goal of this game is to create your own team, made up of NFTs of footballers, and participate in tournaments trying to beat your opponents. We are going to look at how to start playing, how tournaments work and how to earn the rarest cards in this full guide to Sorare’s crypto fantasy football NFTs. Let’s get started!

How to Play Sorare

The first thing you need to do to start playing Sorare is to have an Ethereum wallet at hand. MetaMask is the quickest solution. Once you have created your wallet, replenish it with some ETH. Playing at the beginning is free, but to participate in the more difficult Leagues you will need to buy NFT cards from Sorare’s marketplace. At this point, sign up to Sorare using your email and mobile phone number. Immediately afterwards you will be asked to choose your favourite teams from 44 leagues around the world. Five players will be randomly selected from the teams you choose. This will serve as your initial team pool, allowing you to learn the mechanics and start playing. You will then be given 5 Common cards, which are not NFTs and are not exchangeable with other players.

You are now in – connect your MetaMask wallet and follow Sorare’s tutorial. You will be faced with a trial round and will have to create your team line-up. Sorare’s crypto fantasy football teams are made up of 5 players: goalkeeper, defender, midfielder, striker and a wildcard that can be a player of any position. When setting the formation you also have to choose the team captain. You can see the average score of each player directly on their card, to help you decide how to set up your team. Players earn points based on their performance during official matches; read the complete list. The captain gets 20% more points, so choose your strongest player!

Familiar with the system yet? Now it’s time to find out how to play Sorare! By clicking on Play, you will see the available Leagues and those in which you can compete with your team. For many of them, you have to meet certain requirements, such as holding a minimum number of NFT cards. The more requirements there are, the more rewards the League has to offer you! You can participate in as many tournaments as you want, but each card can only be part of one team at a time.

How NFT cards work on Sorare

The free Common cards are great for getting started in Sorare, but they won’t get you far. Sooner or later you will need to buy players from the primary or secondary market. Let’s see how Sorare cards work!

Sorare cards are available on the platform in 5 different rarities. Common cards are not NFTs, and only earn half as many points as other cards. Then there are Limited cards (maximum 1000 cards in circulation), Rare (100 cards in circulation), Super Rare (10 cards in circulation) and Unique (only one card in circulation). These cards have a blockchain proved scarcity, and have a higher or lower value depending on the player’s skill. Sorare NFT cards also earn Experience Points each time they are used: depending on the Level, the number of points they earn at the end of the game increases. Common, Limited and Rare cards have a maximum level of 20 and can achieve a 10% bonus. Super Rare and Unique cards can reach level 60 and 100 respectively, accumulating bonuses of 30% and 50%!

How does trading work on Sorare? There are three ways to get your hands on NFT cards. The first is to participate in the platform’s primary market through an auction. Every day, Sorare mints new NFT cards from random players. These cards are put up for auction, and all players can ‘bid’ an amount of ETH to try and grab them. 

Alternatively, you can go through the secondary market. If you own an NFT card, you can offer it for sale directly on Sorare. To sell a card, you have to choose a price that you feel is appropriate and wait. If nobody buys it after 48 hours then the card goes back into your wallet. Watch out, though – trading cards in this way decreases the player level! Alternatively, Sorare cards can also be bought on Opensea.

The third way to obtain a Sorare NFT card is to compete in the Leagues. There are various Leagues with different characteristics, such as the age of the players or the league they play in, but the main one is the All Stars League. Finishing on the podium of these tournaments grants you a random NFT card from Sorare. If your team exceeds the scoring thresholds determined by the League, on the other hand, it gives you a reward in ETH. Considering that many other players participate in the Leagues, though, it is very difficult to win and reach the podium unless you have a strong and balanced team. Therefore you need to get your ETH in hand if you want to play competitively, to put together a team that can rival the other coaches!

Now that you know how Sorare’s crypto fantasy football works, you are ready to go scouting NFTs like a real coach. Create your dream team, join the Leagues and become the best coach in Sorare! And why not, you might even find yourself competing against football legends like Mbappé or Zidane!

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Is Ethereum’s price under pressure? The reasons for ETH’s recent drop

ETH’s price is going through a crisis, and it may possibly fall below $1,000. The market has been impacted by Celsius’ issues, and the possible delay of Ethereum 2.0

Ethereum’s performance in June leaves no room for optimism, and as of today (the 16th of June), the price is hovering around USD 1100. What is happening to Ethereum? Will the price of ETH go back up? The crypto market has been in a bearish phase ever since the collapse of Terra (LUNA) and UST. Many people have decided to wait for stricter regulations or a bullish market before buying crypto again. In addition, problems with Celsius (a crypto lending platform) and a possible delay in the arrival of The Merge have contributed to this delicate moment, which is affecting Ethereum’s overall performance. Find out what is happening to the crypto market, Celsius and The Merge, and why Ethereum’s price is dropping.

Could Ethereum 2.0’s release be delayed? What is the ‘difficulty bomb’?

Here is the first piece of bad news for Ethereum that may have had an impact on its performance: the ‘difficulty bomb‘ has been postponed. But first; let’s see what is implied by this term.

Ethereum is a proof-of-work blockchain, but it won’t be for much longer. The most anticipated update of all, Ethereum 2.0, will change the consensus mechanism and make it proof-of-stake. According to Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, and the other developers of the Ethereum Foundation, the update (called The Merge) will improve the performance of the network and decrease the environmental impact of crypto caused by mining.

The ‘difficulty bomb’ is a system that developers have implemented to make ETH mining more difficult and less profitable. This is meant to discourage miners and to convince users to stake their ETH on the Consensus Layer (i.e. the proof-of-stake layer, now still in beta). This system was supposed to make mining counterproductive the day the update was released, but it was postponed. Tim Beiko, Ethereum’s lead developer, said that postponing the difficulty bomb could ease the stress on developers:”… too much pressure puts a strain on development teams, and that’s a situation we want to avoid”.

What can be deduced from this situation is that the delays to the release of Ethereum 2.0 are putting the entire crypto market in trouble. In fact, Ethereum’s overall performance is dropping. This is probably also due to fears that the update will not work and it could cause the entire network to collapse. According to the developers, however, this fear is unfounded, since the testing phases have gone quite well and the code is almost ready to be made public.

DeFi’s largest lending platform, Celsius, is in trouble: is Ethereum’s performance falling because of this?

One of the factors that could have a bearing on the performance of Ethereum and the price of ETH is the difficult time that the lending platform Celsius is facing. Celsius is one of DeFi’s largest centralised platforms for exchanging, borrowing and staking crypto. The platform was well known in the crypto environment because it offered high rewards to users who staked their cryptocurrencies, up to 17% per year.

How does Celsius work? It is a centralised DeFi platform, in essence, an ‘intermediary’ between the user and the world of decentralised finance. Users entrust their cryptos to these platforms, who use them to exploit DeFi’s potential (e.g. through lending, staking or liquidity farming). In return, the platform offers an annual return to users.

This system worked well when the crypto market was bullish, but now Celsius seems to be struggling. On the 12th of June, the platform was forced to halt all operations, probably because it found itself unable to pay its users back. If that were the case, the halting of Celsius’ operations could prove to be a blow to the entire crypto community. However, the platform has announced that it still has a good amount of BTC in its reserves that it can sell to repay debts. The issue is, Bitcoin sell-off would put Satoshi Nakamoto’s crypto even further into crisis. Bitcoin is already dangerously close to the $20,000 mark. If this were to happen, it is possible that the price of Ethereum would also be affected.

The price of Ethereum in the first 6 months of 2022

This first half of 2022 proved to be full of surprises for the traditional market and also for the crypto market. Ethereum’s performance in particular has been mixed, although the first week of 2022 proved to be positive for Buterin’s crypto. In fact, at the beginning of the year, Ethereum’s price structure was even more solid than Bitcoin’s, holding firmly at around $3,700.

The first difficulties occurred around mid-January, when Russia announced that crypto would be regulated or, worse, banned. On that occasion, the price of Ethereum fell, reaching a low of USD 2160. And just as it was trying to rise again, a second blow, the escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian war in mid-February dashed the hopes of all Ethereum enthusiasts, sending the price of ETH back to around USD 2150.

Signs of an upturn only returned around the beginning of April. On the 5th April, the price of Ethereum reached USD 3520, only to fall to a resistance threshold of 3200. The threshold was quickly broken, however, and Ethereum began a downward trend along with the rest of the crypto market. It was precisely in these ominous market conditions that the collapse of Terra (LUNA) took place, which shook the market terribly. The price of Ethereum reached a low of 1966 dollars! The last time ETH was trading at less than two thousand dollars? the 21st of July 2021.

Over the past few days, the price of Ethereum has continued to drop precipitously, and on the 15th of June it came perilously close to three digits, trading for $1030. In all of this, Ethereum miners are preparing for the transition to proof-of-stake, selecting new shores to migrate to.

The Ethereum mining industry, currently worth $19 billion, has been struggling for some time. In May, for example, revenues from mining activities fell by 27%. The average price of gas fees for transactions on Ethereum also fell. While this is positive news, it also means that there is less interest in Ethereum. Perhaps users are waiting for The Merge to happen before they start using Buterin’s blockchain again.

The crypto market is not the most prosperous at the moment, and the price of Ethereum is falling. But the reasons are not only to be found within Ethereum, as The Merge update is proceeding smoothly. Despite this, Ethereum’s psychological threshold of one thousand dollars has come close. Will Ethereum’s price be able to recover and return to its ATH of 4878 dollars? Especially during a bearish market, always remember the old adage of the crypto world: DYOR!