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What are CryptoKitties? Who created them? Why did this collection mark the evolution of the blockchain? This and juch more in the NFT guide and history on Flow!

CryptoKitties are a game on blockchain based on the breeding and care of digital kittens in the form of NFTs. In addition to being one of the very first non-strictly financial applications of blockchain, CryptoKitties wrote blockchain history as pioneers of NFTs and gaming on Ethereum. Their success has helped advance the blockchain ecosystem in terms of technology and adoption. But how does the CryptoKitties game work? Who created it? And, how has it influenced the crypto world?

What are CryptoKitties? How can you play with digital kittens?

“Cats are impossible to understand. They are ambassadors of pharaohs, memes and your mother’s Facebook page. They don’t discriminate, they despise everyone equally.” To date, CryptoKitties’ NFT kittens have more than 130,000 wallets involved, 2 million NFTs and a trading volume 70,000 ETH. CryptoKitties are a collection of NFTs depicting cats with different characteristics that need to be bred and fed in order to give birth to kittens. Playing with CryptoKitties means first and foremost collecting, but also becoming expert breeders and scholars of feline genetics, as well as traders doing business by buying and selling the rarest specimens. In addition to this, thanks to the Kitty Verse platform, one can participate in experiences and play games with the CryptoKitties, e.g. by solving riddles and puzzles to unlock new attributes and gadgets, or make the kittens fight each other like in KotoWars. CryptoKitties are now compatible with other digital worlds such as the Decentraland metaverse.

To playCryptoKitties from your desktop, the project team recommends using Chrome or Firefox as a browser for better performance. In the meantime, a mobile app is being developed to keep the NFT Kittties with you at all times! To play, you also need a digital wallet and ETH, the Ethereum crypto that serves to cover the costs of feeding and raising the kittens. Where can you buy CryptoKitties NFTs? They are available on the project’s marketplace (accessible from the website) in the form of direct sales or offers, or in the most widely used NFT marketplaces such as OpenSea. The price of CryptoKitties starts from 0.003 ETH, up to thousands of dollars.

From Ethereum to Flow, the blockchain for NFTs

It can be said that they have come a long way since their launch in 2017, but CryptoKitties have been a success right from the start. The project was launched in 2017 by Axiom Zen, a company dedicated to promoting projects on new technologies such as blockchain. The Axiom Zen team, of which Layne Lafrance was also a member, presented the NFTs at the ETH Waterloo Ethereum hackathon, i.e. an event for programmers gathered to develop new projects or obtain funding. The first NFTs of the CryptoKitties with the Gen0 collection of 50,000 NFTs were soon released on Ethereum. The public reaction was immediately positive, so much so that transactions to buy and play with the kittens increased so much that they congested the Ethereum network, driving gas fees through the roof.

Ofc @CryptoKitties 🥹 pic.twitter.com/Y6bnEg6uDJ

— Dapper Labs (@dapperlabs) September 19, 2022

At its peak in 2017, CryptoKitties attracted more than 14,000 active users per day and popularised Ethereum’s technology worldwide. In other words, CryptoKitties helped make Ethereum the benchmark for digital collections and gaming. However, the collection also highlighted some of Ethereum’s weaknesses, and consequently the need for a highly scalable blockchain suitable for hosting games and entertainment. From Axiom’s team in 2018, Dapper Labs ‘The NFT Company’ was founded to build Flow, a blockchain with these characteristics. Starting in 2021, CryptoKitties began a gradual transition from Ethereum to Flow. This change, linked to the reasons for expanding the collection and the game, was designed to improve the project from an aesthetic and technical point of view (by implementing animations, for example) and to make the experience easier for users, even those less used to dealing with blockchain tools. Flow is mainly used in the field of games and social networks, and in general for all those experiences that involve many users simultaneously on the blockchain. Flow intends to manage communities that grow as fast as the Web3 and make blockchain usable for people, and “not just for industry experts and early adopters”. Other popular NFT projects are built on Flow, including NBA Top Shot.

The story of CryptoKitties is the story of the evolution of blockchain

In short, CryptoKitties opened up a need for blockchain scalability, which the industry has now been working on continuously for years. The CryptoKitties crash that sent Ethereum into a tailspin brought a number of innovative solutions to overcome Ethereum’s scalability challenges, as well as Layer 2s that are now essential pillars for network usability. Furthermore, the fact that Dapper Labs created one of the first games on blockchain brought countless new users to the technology, demonstrating the full potential of blockchain in the fields of digital art and gaming. Simply put, CryptoKitties is a pioneer of NFT games and its success pushed the blockchain ecosystem forward in terms of both technology and adoption.

The technology behind CryptoKitties

Each CryptoKitties is an ERC-721 token, the standard for non-fungible tokens. Each CryptoKitties is unique and indivisible and its ownership is tracked thanks to smart contracts. The Core CryptoKitties smart contract tracks all transfers of NFTs and all new ones created through breeding, as well as the attributes and genes that make NFTs different from each other. All actions in the game such as breeding, feeding, selling are transactions performed by smart contracts on the blockchain and therefore require a commission. Since they are NFTs, even if one day Dapper Labs goes bankrupt or the CryptoKitties’ platform gets eliminated, the digital kittens will continue to exist thanks to the blockchain, and so will their value.

Attributes and genetics of CryptoKitties

If there are over 2 million NFTs of CryptoKitties, how do you determine the rarest? By what is their value determined? CryptoKitties, unlike CryptoPunks, for example, are not a limited collection. There is a complex system of attributes, called ‘Cattributes’, and genetic combinations that also inspired the constitution of the little monsters in Axie Infinity, the DeFi video game. To begin with, CryptoKitties are divided into four types: Normal, Fancy, Special Editions and Exclusive. Already, these indicate an increasing scale of rarity because they are available in different quantities.

Each CryptoKitties in turn has a name and 12 attributes such as eye shape and colour, fur type, mouth type, all of which reflect its genetic code. Each attribute consists of a block of 4 genes, a primary one that is the one that manifests itself in the kitten and 3 latent ones. For example, if the fur colour has emerald green as primary gene (P), as hidden genes it can have salmon pink (H1), an orange soda colour (H2) and again orange soda as the third hidden gene (H3). While the primary gene is visible in the NFT, the secondary genes are transmitted to the offspring of CryptoKitties according to different percentages, e.g. the primary genes of the father cat are transmitted in 37.5% of the cases, H1 in 9.4%, H2 in 2.3% and H3 in 0.8%. All kittens can play the role of both father and mother – very modern from CryptoKitties! There is a tool that shows hypothetical kittens and their rarity based on the pairing of the parents. However, CryptoKitties are not always born based on percentages, it can happen that genes mutate creating truly unique and unexpected kittens! Since 2018, Mewtation Gems and Family Jewels, badges to trace and certify the lineage and pedigree of NFTs, have been included.

What is the rarest NFT of CryptoKitties?

A first way of assessing the rarity of CryptoKitties is therefore the type and its genetics; indeed, cattributes have varying degrees of rarity. However, there are other characteristics that do not depend on these aspects, but equally affect the value of NFTs:

1. Gen0 of CryptoKitties: the first NFTs in 50,000 copies are the rarest and most valuable ever. At the moment, they are not all in circulation, about 12,000 are still owned by the team waiting to be released on special occasions;
2. “Cooldown” or the resting time between one puppy and another. Each Kitties has a cooldown that depends on its generation, e.g. those from Gen0 have to wait 1 minute to make a new puppy, those from Gen26 onwards, over 1 week;
3. ID number: NFT cats are numbered according to birth order, so the lower numbers are the oldest CryptoKitties that are sold at higher prices by collectors;
4. Errors: sometimes newborn CryptoKitties have graphic errors, since mutations are difficult to create they are rarer and particularly hard to find;
5. Pure-bred kittens: very few specimens have the same gene repeated 4 times in the attribute block.

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Do you know about the most important bearish phases in history? What does the crypto bear market of 2022 have in common with past ones?

Following Confucius’ maxim ‘study the past if you want to predict the future’, we are here to analyse past bearish phases with the aim of understanding the dynamics of the bear market we are experiencing now.

If you too are wondering: how long will the 2022 crypto bear market last? Will the price of Bitcoin collapse again? Unfortunately there are no certain answers. However, in this article, you can find information that can help you look at the current state of the market in perspective. For example, we can look at the duration of bearish phases, the elements involved or understand what caused them.

1. The American stock market crash of 1929

The New York Stock Exchange crash of 1929 is the first major crash of a contemporary financial market and the first major crisis caused by free markets and financial speculation. Before the crash of ’29, The United States of America was experiencing one of the most prosperous and economically prosperous periods in history, the so-called ‘Roaring Twenties’. The great economic prosperity of the States seemed unstoppable, made possible by victory in World War I as well as liberal economic policies. However, this economic growth suddenly came to a halt, due to the progressive saturation of the market. Factories closed, products remained unsold and companies began to lay off employees. The crisis of the real economy was reflected on the New York stock exchange through the collapse of the stocks held by both the big capitalists of the time as well as the middle class and small bourgeoisie, who suddenly found themselves without savings.

The real crash came on Thursday 24th October, the infamous Black Thursday. That moment started an intense bear market, nicknamed in retrospect: ‘The Great Depression’. The Great Depression triggered a recession that resulted in a 60% drop in world trade and generated 15 million unemployed people. The Dow Jones, the main US stock index, collapsed by 75% of its value in a few months.

 

2. The ‘dotcom’ bubble

One of the bear markets in history worth mentioning is the one following the ‘dotcom bubble’. The term ‘dotcom bubble‘ is used to describe the phenomenon of unprecedented growth in the share valuations of technology companies, known as ‘dotcoms’, which occurred in the late 1990s. This juncture was characterised by an exponential growth of investments in internet start-ups. It all started with Netscape, the first Internet browser start-up, whose price per share jumped from $28 to $147 in five months. This strong bullish movement brought incredible enthusiasm to the markets, and in particular to the ‘dotcoms’. Alongside Netscape, Yahoo, Amazon and Apple, hundreds of other fledgling companies exploded on the stock exchange.

However, the bubble burst in April 2000, shortly after the all time high (ATH) of the NASDAQ, the stock market index that tracks the prices of the major American technology companies, at 5,048 points. The bubble burst because, in most cases, the dotcoms had no intrinsic value or viable product but were nothing more than aggressive marketing campaigns. This bear market lasted about two years, during which time the NASDAQ index hit 1,111 points, losing more than 75% of its value.

3. The 2008 subprime crisis

The 2008 bear market can be included in the list of major bear markets in history. The economic crisis of 2008 is the one that has most affected our most recent past. Once again, it was the US that started this recession, with the subprime mortgage crisis that erupted at the end of 2006. Subprime mortgages were financial loans granted by major US banks and financial giants, including Chase, JP Morgan and Lehman Brothers to high risk defaulters, i.e. bad debtors. The crisis exploded in September 2008, when the insolvency situation generated by subprime mortgages was combined with a bubble in the housing market. This bubble was the result of accommodative policies by the Federal Reserve (FED), the central bank of the United States. 

The bear market of 2008 did not remain confined to the States but obviously extended to Europe as well. The central banks of the countries found themselves forced to inject huge amounts of money into their economies, through monetary policies of Quantitative Easing, in an attempt to stem the collapse of the global economy. During the 2008 bear market, the S&P 500 (Standard and Poors) stock market index, which tracks the performance of the 500 most capitalised US companies, plummeted 38.5% and the US financial giant Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy. The bear market of 2008 had a much bigger impact than can be guessed from the charts. The effects of the systemic crisis generated by the bursting of the subprime bubble are still being felt today.

 

4. The first crypto bear market: the Mt. Gox hack in 2014

The first real crypto bear market arrived in 2014. Sure, Bitcoin existed since 2008, but until 2013, it had no real market. The only way to buy it was through peer-to-peer exchanges, and its use was relegated to Dark Web sites like Silk Road. However, from 2013 onwards, the buying and selling of BTC was building a real market, mainly due to the growth of the then largest crypto exchange in the world, MT Gox. It was responsible for processing the majority of Bitcoin transactions worldwide.

This period was characterised by the emergence of many exchanges and wallets and is nicknamed the ‘Hack Era’. Between March 2012 and October 2013, numerous exchanges including Linode, Biconica and Bit floor were hacked. The first hacks did not affect the price of Bitcoin, which continued to rise undaunted. From $5 in March 2012, the price of BTC reached $1,150 in November 2013.

At this point, however, came the first black swan event in crypto history happened: the Mt. Gox hack, through which 850,000 Bitcoins were stolen. This black swan event kicked off the first real crypto bear market that lasted 391 days. From a price of $1,150 BTC reached $150, losing 73% of its value.

5. Bear market 2018: ICOs

The spirit of the crypto market cycle from 2016 to 2019 can be summed up in one acronym: ICOs. The term is an acronym for Initial Coin Offering, and it is the equivalent of initial public offerings in the cryptocurrency world. They are pre-sales of tokens that allow those who participate in them to financially support a crypto project before it is launched, through the purchase of native crypto.

This way of selling to the public was popularised by Ethereum in July 2014. ICOs have been simultaneously the curse and delight of this crypto cycle. On the one hand, they allowed the Web3 world to grow and many projects to find supporters. On the other hand, they generated a major speculative bubble, comparable in the way it inflated to the dotcom bubble. The proliferation of ICOs and the great enthusiasm for this new market allowed for many fraudulent projects to raise huge amounts of money. Due to the global macroeconomic situation, in particular the restrictive monetary policies including Quantitative Tightening, the ICO bubble burst at the end of 2017. This caused the beginning of the bear market. Quantitative Tightening is an abrupt tightening of a state’s monetary policy that results in an increase in interest rates with the aim of limiting inflation.

Bitcoin’s price collapsed from the $19,100 ATH to the $3,200 level, losing 84% of its value. Ethereum fared even worse, as the value of Vitalik Buterin‘s crypto went from $1,400 to around $150, registering a downward movement of -95%. The bottom, i.e. the lowest point reached by a crypto in this cycle, was reached exactly one year after the ATH was reached, on the 17th of December 2018.

6. The crypto bear market of 2022

The particularities of this market cycle are the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, an event of global magnitude that affected the economy and society, and the entry of institutional investors into the market.

The latter increased speculation, a double-edged sword for all kinds of markets. On the one hand it generates rapid growth, on the other it creates the conditions for an equally rapid descent. This collapse actually occurred on the 12th of May 2021, the day when the price of Bitcoin dropped from around $60,000 to $30,000 in just a few hours. However, this collapse did not signal the start of a bear market as it was reabsorbed in the following months, allowing Bitcoin to reach another high in November 2021. The crypto bear market of 2022 began in the spring, the first catalyst for this bearish phase being the Terra-Luna ecosystem collapse of May 2022. As the months went by, events such as the FED raising interest rates and the failure of the centralised exchange FTX a few weeks ago further fuelled this bear market.

The biggest news in the latest phase of the crypto market, which runs from 2020 to today, concerns adoption. In past bear markets, so-called mass adoption, which was resolved in the number of traditional companies adopting Web3 technologies and the number of users using them, came to an almost complete standstill. The cycle we are currently experiencing seems different. Adoption is continuing despite the conditions of this bear market. An example of this trend is Polygon‘s blockchain, which signed important partnerships with companies outside the world of crypto.

The price differences between the 2018 and 2022 bear markets

So, what are the main differences between this bear market and that of 2018? Let’s look at it from the perspective of the price of the two highest market cap cryptos: Bitcoin and Ethereum. We can start by looking at the price level from which the two bear markets started: in 2018, Bitcoin’s price at ATH was $19,100 while Ethereum’s was around $1,400.

The bearish movement from the highest point reached by the price of Bitcoin to its lowest point in 2018-2019 lasted 364 days, causing BTC and ETH to capitulate at $3,200 and $150, respectively. The price swing was -84% in the case of Bitcoin and -95% in the case of Ethereum.

In the 2022 bear market crypto, the bottom for Bitcoin is for now, is around $15,500. It was reached on the 21st of November 2022, 375 days after the ATH was reached. For the price of Ethereum the situation is somewhat different. The ATH was reached on the 15th of November 2021 but the bottom is located, for now, at around $880, which was reached in July 2022.

Now that you have some information at your disposal, how much longer do you think the 2022 crypto bear market will last? Could the bearish phase have ended a few days ago with the drop to $15,735?

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Fan tokens are cryptocurrencies created to bring sports teams or artists closer to their supporters and to offer exclusive benefits

In recent years, fan tokens have catapulted a lot of new users into the crypto world, specifically fans of sports teams or music groups. At the moment, these are mainly used in the fields of sports and music, but they can potentially be exploited by anything that involves interaction between a brand and a fan base. Non-sports tokens are also often referred to as ‘social tokens’. In this article, to explain what they are, how they work and what they are used for, we will use the example of the most popular fan tokens : the football tokens on Socios.

What are fan tokens and how do they work?

Fan tokens are a type of cryptocurrency, so in essence they are cryptographic digital coins built on a blockchain. They grant the holder access to a range of benefits or experiences related to the sports team that issues them. The working mechanism of fan tokens is simple: a fan buys them and the team grants rewards such as merchandise, match tickets, experiences with players, and the ability to vote on certain team decisions. Fan tokens were created precisely with the intention of improving and enlivening the relationship between fans and their favourite teams.

So, are they cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin? Technically speaking, fan tokens are created on existing blockchains and use standards developed by third parties. For example if they are based on Ethereum, the standard of reference is ERC-20. In contrast, Bitcoin runs on its own native blockchain. This is precisely why they are ‘tokens’ and not ‘coins’ as in the case of Bitcoin. However, fan tokens share the characteristic of fungibility with Bitcoin. In other words, they are not unique to each other but are interchangeable (so to speak ‘one is as good as the other’). In turn, fungibility differentiates them from NFTs, which are actually an abbreviation of ‘non-fungible tokens’. Fan tokens are therefore not used for collecting.

Are fan tokens utility tokens?

Tokens in the crypto sector are generally classified into utility and security tokens. Utility tokens have a specific utility within the ecosystem that issued them. For example, UNI is the utility token of the Uniswap decentralised exchange, which is used to participate in project governance. On the other hand, security tokens promise a future profit to their holder. In what category do fan tokens fit?

According to the Chiliz team, which actually launched the first tokens of this kind on the Socios platform, they are neither utility tokens nor security tokens. Fan tokens constitute a ‘third’ and new token with specific characteristics, which emerged from the need to unite fans and teams with Web3 tools.

Where can you buy them?

Fan tokens can be bought from platforms that issue them, such as Socios on the Chiliz blockchain. To buy fan tokens on Socios you need to sign up and buy $CHZ. In exchange for this crypto, you then can get your team’s fan tokens. Fan tokens are bought like any other cryptocurrency. Once the purchase is complete, you will find the fan tokens directly in your wallet. In some cases, fan tokens are listed in crypto exchanges.

What can you do with fan tokens?

Fan tokens were created to increase the participation of fans in the events of their team. With them, football clubs can offer direct involvement, making the relationship with fans reciprocal.

Tifosi dell'@Udinese_1896, preparate gli SSU ⚪️⚫️

🎄 Cena di Natale Bianconera: riscattabile su Fan Rewards a partire dalle 11 di domani. pic.twitter.com/nesWwXvzME

— Socios Italia (@SociosItalia) November 24, 2022

Why is this needed to bring fans closer together? As Alexandre Dreyfus, CEO of Chiliz and Socios says, 99.9 percent of fans don’t even go to the stadium. Teams therefore need channels to interact with the entire fan base, not just those who can physically go to the games.

What are fan tokens actually used for? Let’s look at a few examples. Holders can choose how to decorate the team’s dressing room with motivational phrases, or the motto on the captain’s armband (as in the case of F.C. Barcelona). Or, decide the song with which to celebrate anniversaries or the design of the kits (in the case of Inter). Napoli fans these days are voting on the new name for the team’s training ground.

Azzurro, Vesuvio, Partenope o Passione: scegli il nome del campo d'allenamento dell'@sscnapoli 💙

Registrandoti sulla nostra app entro il 4/12 riceverai un Fan Token $NAP in omaggio per partecipare alla votazione!

👉 Vota: https://t.co/2lPK0xNj3U pic.twitter.com/EtGseaIk0J

— Socios Italia (@SociosItalia) November 23, 2022

As the owners of the Udinese fan token prepare to redeem their Christmas dinner.

Tifosi dell'@Udinese_1896, preparate gli SSU ⚪️⚫️

🎄 Cena di Natale Bianconera: riscattabile su Fan Rewards a partire dalle 11 di domani. pic.twitter.com/nesWwXvzME

— Socios Italia (@SociosItalia) November 24, 2022

Fan tokens are mainly bought by fans. On the other hand, like all other cryptocurrencies, they can be used by traders for buying and selling transactions. The market for fan tokens has proven to be very much linked to the performance of matches as was evident in the case of the 2022 World Cup and national team fan tokens.

Now that you know what fan tokens are, how they work and what they are used for, you may be wondering what their true value is within the crypto landscape, but also within the sports landscape. Their relevance depends on the importance given to fan tokens. If a team sees its fans only as people who go to games, fan tokens do not seem so interesting. When, on the other hand, fans are the lifeblood of the entire football club, fan tokens are a tool for building relationships and sharing sporting enthusiasm.

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Which World Cup 2022 fan tokens are in the spotlight? Socios has prepared a prize game for national team fans!

On Sunday, the 20th of November, the World Cup 2022 officially kicked off with the whistle of the match between Qatar and Ecuador. The match, preceded by a pyrotechnic opening ceremony, kicked off the first World Cup in an Arab Emirate. Socios, the fan token platform built on Chiliz, and its national team fan tokens benefited at the price level from the start of the FIFA World Cup, with bullish movements on the charts.

Socios has also created an ad-hoc section for the 2022 World Cup called Expert Predictions in order to get its users as involved as possible. Find out which World Cup 2022 fan tokens everyone is keeping an eye on and how to play Socios Expert Predictions.

#FootballUnitesTheWorld 🌍

On the eve of the #FIFAWorldCup, more than 40,000 fans from all over the world attended the opening night of the FIFA Fan Festival in Doha 🎆

— FIFA.com (@FIFAcom) November 20, 2022

World Cup 2022 fan tokens in the spotlight

The cryptos that have taken centre stage during these last two complicated weeks for the market are the 2022 FIFA World Cup fan tokens developed on Socios. These fan tokens are those of the national teams of Portugal (POR), Spain (SNFT), Brazil (BFT) and Argentina (ARG), which were all released in the summer of 2021. The Italian national team, which unfortunately did not qualify for the competition, also launched its ITA fan token on the 29th of October 2022, in collaboration with Socios and at the initiative of the FIGC.

The recent popularity of these fan tokens can be attributed to the start of the World Cup, which brought interest and buying volumes to these fan cryptos. For example, the fan token of the Portugal team made a bullish movement of almost 100 per cent in 10 days, from a price of around $10 on 10 November 2022 to $19 on 19 November. The fan tokens of Spain (SNFT) and Brazil (BFT) did even better, marking price increases of more than 100% on the chart.

A day in the life of a $POR Fan Token holder:

✅Visit @selecaoportugal's dressing room
✅Touch the José Alvalade Stadium grass on a Nation's League matchday
✅Watch their National Team win 4×0 from a VIP Box pic.twitter.com/6TQk0uY7Dk

— Socios.com (@socios) June 6, 2022

The price of World Cup 2022 fan tokens rose in the days leading up to the start of the competition, so why all this movement even before kick-off? The tokens of Spain, Portugal, Argentina and Brazil may have risen due to fan buying predicting a World Cup victory. Some traders may also have moved in advance trying to capture interest in everything to do with the competition in Qatar.

This hype around the World Cup 2022 fan tokens has also helped CHZ, the Chiliz blockchain crypto that performed well in the days leading up to the start of the competition. Chiliz is the network on which Socios’s platform is built and also the network on which fan tokens are exchanged. Chiliz’s crypto, CHZ went from a price of $0.15 to $0.26 in just over a week. All eyes are on these fan tokens, will the 2022 World Cup matches influence their price?

How to play with Socios Expert Predictions

The World Cup 2022, has a very entertaining element that we didn’t have in previous competitions, thanks to Socios’ Expert Predictions. Socios has come up with a ploy to allow football fans to follow the FIFA World Cup in an even more exciting way thanks to the new Expert Prediction section.

🏆🌍 Create your legacy. Make history.

64 matches, 32 teams, 1 opportunity to become the first-ever World Championship Leaderboard winner.

Play for free | #BeMoreThanAFan pic.twitter.com/KCT0rINNzN

— Socios.com (@socios) November 11, 2022

Expert Predictions is a new section of the Socios platform where you can win great prizes, including fan tokens, by guessing the results of FIFA World Cup matches. Playing Expert Prediction is free and very simple, simply go to the ‘matches’ section of the Socios smartphone app and register your prediction. The more accurate the prediction, the more points you earn.

For example, if you guess the correct result, you can earn more points than if you only guess the winning team. The points you earn over the course of the competition are used to determine your position in the standings – the higher up you are, the better your chances of winning one of the prizes. In addition, if you follow the matches live, during half-time you can try the free kick challenge, a mini-game on the Socios smartphone app, which allows you to gain additional experience points that are necessary to climb the rankings. What prizes are up for grabs when playing on Socios? By playing the Socios Expert Prediction you can win, in addition to World Cup 2022 fan tokens, a Playstation 5, football shirts and football boots autographed by the players, and ‘grandstand’ tickets for some club matches scheduled for next year.

Introducing Sorare: Global Cup '22 🌍🏆

Experience the eclectic worlds of Sorare Managers as they prepare for the biggest tournament of their lives.

Join them and collect your cards, build your squad and play to win. Learn more at: https://t.co/ss9DcH0Vpt#OwnYourWorld pic.twitter.com/Xs4eeROtx8

— Sorare (@Sorare) November 10, 2022

As always, when it comes to crypto soccer, we also find the ‘paw’ of Sorare. The Ethereum-based platform has also launched a play-to-earn game dedicated to the World Cup. “Sorare’s ‘Global Cup’ allows all those who are subscribed to its crypto fantasy football platform, to build a team for the World Cup for free, and challenge other users in order to win a wide range of prizes. The first prize for the ‘Global Cup’ includes 3 Ether, around $3,000 at the time, and 3 special NFT cards created by Sorare specially for the occasion.

It promises to be a very interesting FIFA World Cup, also for Web3 fans thanks to the 2022 World Cup fan tokens, the Expert Prediction and the Sorare ‘Global Cup’.

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What is The Open Network? Discover the Toncoin (TON) crypto blockchain, chosen by Telegram for its Web3 projects!

Among the social networks looking to integrate with the blockchain is Telegram! The messaging service started to develop its decentralised network in 2019. However, due to legal issues it decided to discontinue the project. The Open Network has thus passed into the hands of developers who have built a Proof-of-Stake blockchain that aspires to become a benchmark for dapps. The Telegram team remained committed to The Open Network, to the extent of integrating the Toncoin crypto into the app. Find out what The Open Network is and what Toncoin, Telegram’s cryptocurrency of choice, is for!

What is The Open Network?

The Open Network is a Layer 1 Proof-of-Stake blockchain founded in 2019, also known under its acronym TON. Although the initial idea for the project was developed by Telegram’s team, the messaging app shelved The Open Network in 2020. The development of TON was in fact blocked by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Now, The Open Network is a community-driven blockchain, reborn through the efforts of its developers, via the TON Foundation.

The $TON Foundation published an article discussing TON’s history and the main stages of how the ecosystem was formed, and it also went over development plans for 2023.

You can read it here: https://t.co/yNu7SOQvAo pic.twitter.com/NgErR9bTvW

— TON (@ton_blockchain) November 19, 2022

Telegram vs. SEC lawsuit over Gram’s crypto ICO 

In 2019, the Telegram team, led by brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov, began exploring blockchain solutions for the messaging app. Thus, in 2019, the first testnet of The Open Network was launched with an ICO of the network’s crypto, which was then called Gram. On this occasion, the SEC opened an investigation to verify that Telegram had not sold the Gram crypto without authorisation as if it were a security. After several legal battles, applying the Howey test, the SEC ruled that Gram’s purchasers reasonably expected profits to be derived from the company’s entrepreneurial efforts and that Gram’s was therefore an unauthorised sale of securities. The lawsuit stopped the distribution of Gram. Telegram was ordered to pay a fine to the SEC of $18.5 million and to return $1.2 billion to those who had participated in the ICO. 

At this point, we are in 2020, Telegram decides to abandon the project. In a post, Pavel Durov expresses his displeasure at the outcome, sarcastically pointing out that the United States has the power to decide not only whether a coin can be distributed in its home state, but also worldwide: ‘perhaps even more paradoxically, the US court has declared that Grams cannot be distributed not only in the US, but globally. Why? Because, according to the court, a US citizen could find a way to access the TON platform after its launch. Therefore, in order to prevent this from happening, Gram crypto should not be distributed worldwide, even though every other country on the planet seems to be perfectly OK with TON’.

The Open Network: blockchain reborn thanks to community

After Telegram left the scene, the project was taken over by the developers themselves. From the original core of TON, two parallel projects were born, one of which kept Telegram’s way via the TON Foundation: ‘a decentralised community started by Anatoliy Makosov and Kirill Emelyanenko after Telegram walked away from the project’. 

The second project born from the ashes of Telegram’s crypto experience is FreeTON, which is now called Everscale, another Layer 1 Proof-of-Stake blockchain. Everscale works mainly on scalability, with over 200 secondary and parallel chains processing transactions together.

The restoration of The Open Network blockchain began in January 2021. After ten months, the blockchain was brought back to life with the basic infrastructure and tools. In November 2021, The Open Network was inaugurated and during 2022, the efforts of the developers were concentrated on providing The Open Network with the appropriate technology and security. Most of the assets and services on the network were created this year: tokens, non-fungible tokens, staking, domain names, marketplaces, multifunctional wallets, DEX and other decentralised finance services. TON also has two bridges, one on Ethereum and one on the Binance Smart Chain. The network’s native crypto is no longer called Gram but Toncoin (TON) and is used to pay fees to execute smart contracts, to use dapps, to participate in governance, and to be staked and contribute to the consensus mechanism. To date, The Open Network is operational with 200 validators and has 1.4 million accounts.

Toncoin (TON) has become Telegram’s cryptocurrency

Although Telegram is no longer actively involved in The Open Network, TON still remains linked to the app. The crypto TON has become Telegram’s crypto. Thanks to Wallet Bot developed by Telegram’s developers and launched in April 2022, it is possible to buy TON and send crypto to users via chat and without fees. With Wallet Bot, it is also possible to buy cryptocurrencies with a credit card and perform peer-to-peer transactions. 

The Open Network is also used by Telegram for its ‘TON domain name service’. Via the Fragment platform, users can buy crypto TON names for Telegram in the form of non-fungible tokens, names that are in effect NFT domains. The biggest sale was of the Telegram name @news, bought on the 18^th of November for 994,000 TON (almost $2 million). This was followed by @auto at 900,000 TON and @bank at 850,000 TON. 

Like any NFT domain, a telegram name grants exclusive ownership of a username and a digital identity. 

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Do you want to create an NFT project but don’t know where to start? OpenSea is a really simple tool to create and sell NFTs for free in 10 minutes

If there is one thing the NFT market of the past year has taught us, it is that anything can be sold on the blockchain. Or rather, any work that is completely original. You have probably heard of NFTs being sold at stratospheric prices on OpenSea or other marketplaces and wondered if creating and selling NFTs is within your reach. The answer is yes! If you have a unique idea and would like to turn it into a non-fungible token, you will find everything you need to get started in this guide. Wanting to monetise your creations is legitimate, but creating an NFT is not enough to start earning money. Making your way in this field requires commitment and hard work, such as building a community.

Generally minting an NFT, i.e. registering a piece of work on blockchain, requires a cost to pay in fees. However, there are platforms on which you can create and view NFTs for free in as little as 10 minutes. This is the case with OpenSea, the most popular NFT marketplace! OpenSea offers easy and intuitive tools to make your NFT project come true, and is often chosen by beginners because it is a giant showcase due to its large audience. The process for creating and selling NFT differs between platforms, although they share some steps. In the following 5 steps you will discover how to use OpenSea, the industry standard.

Ready? Let’s get started!

1. Create your crypto wallet

If you don’t already have one, now is the time to create a decentralised crypto wallet. Your wallet allows you to connect to the blockchain network and keep the key to your cryptocurrencies safe. One of the most popular wallets is MetaMask, also available as a Chrome extension or Firefox add-on. Metamask is one of the wallets recommended by OpenSea for creating and selling NFTs on Ethereum. If you intend to use the Solana network instead, OpenSea recommends the Phantom wallet. In the next section we will elaborate on the choice of which blockchain to use.

At this point, you may also want to buy cryptocurrencies. NFTs are usually minted using the Ethereum blockchain network, so having Ether is ideal to pay the fees to create your NFT. In some cases it is possible to create NFTs for free on OpenSea, i.e. without paying these fees.

Once you have created your crypto wallet, associate it with OpenSea and create your account.

2. Choose the blockchain on which to create your NFT

In contrast to NFT platforms such as SuperRare where NFT projects must be approved by the team, OpenSea is open to all. OpenSea is currently compatible with the Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Klaytn, Arbitrum and Optimism blockchains. Each of these blockchains has its own characteristics and different gas fees associated with transactions on their networks. To choose a blockchain for minting, take these costs into consideration. However, OpenSea is a great way to start your venture into the world of non-fungible tokens because, thanks to the ‘lazy minting’ mechanism, you can create NFTs for free, i.e. without paying fees if you choose Ethereum or Polygon. When you decide to use this option, your NFT is put up for sale but is also not yet registered on the blockchain. The latter step will only be taken when the work is actually purchased. In this manner, the payment of fees falls on the buyer.

3. Upload your NFT artwork

Of course, you will need your own creation to put on sale. NFTs can be associated with anything: a drawing, an MP3, or a three-dimensional image. Be creative! Opensea supports various file types including JPG, PNG, GIF, MP4, OGG but the file size of a non-fungible token must not exceed 100 MB.

In the ‘My Collection’ section, accessible from your account, click on ‘Create’. Create your Collection, it will be the showcase for your artwork. From here you can start creating your NFTs by filling out the “Create New Item” screen, you will need to enter:

1. the file of the piece;
2. the name of the piece;
3. a link to the website or social page of your collection (not mandatory);
4. the description of your NFT;
5. the collection in which your NFT will be contained.

Next, you can also add other characteristics such as the attributes for the NFT (such as the available traits if it is a PFP collection), or the number of copies available. In this step, you will also have to select the blockchain you chose to create and sell your NFT on OpenSea. At this point your non-fungible token is ready and you can share it on social media. This is a crucial step, we will see why in step 5.

You can also set a ‘creator fee’, i.e. a percentage you will receive for each sale of your NFT work. This is known as a ‘royalty’. The percentage can be as high as 10%.

4. Choose the price of your NFT

After you have minted your NFT, all that remains is to choose the price at which you want to sell it. Go to your item’s page and click on ‘Sell’. Here, you can select the price of the NFT, and how long to leave it available on the market. A 2.5% commission from OpenSea will be subtracted from the selling price.

5. Advertise your collection!

Now your NFT is available on OpenSea, but it is not enough to simply create an NFT in order to earn money. As in real life, competition between artists is particularly fierce. For this, you will need to advertise your work effectively.

As you continue to expand your collection, you will have an increasingly interesting portfolio to show. In addition, consider also using art or social platforms such as Reddit, Instagram and Twitter: the more people like your work, the more possible buyers will want your NFT!

Cultivating a community is crucial for creating a successful NFT project. So is offering works with exclusive advantages that can attract collectors. Some of these advantages could be the possibility of using NFTs in the Metaverse, participating in a DAO and deciding on key aspects of the collection, or associating physical goods with the purchase of NFTs.

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