I joined when the J-League was announced and there was not that much going on at that time, West Ham was the only club on the platform competing in Premier League.

Because Sorare uses suitable technologies so it interested me: Ethereum, GraphQL, and a tool to help people find players even if they write their names with mistakes, these were essential elements in my decision to dig in.

I wanted to see 11 players to play and not 5, the games' names were strange to me (Champion and Challenger for example).

The three things I was pretty happy with, and synonyms of the green light for me to get in were: Sorare the company (fast execution), Ethereum (good tech), and the investors (football champions).

YNWA: The more you play the game probably the less time you need to spend on the game. Of course, there are always researches that you can do but at the moment the platform is not the place to get the information and is there to execute human decisions (buying, selling, and building teams). All the other interactions you have, probably with managers, with sites, with discords channels, and other forms of media way, this information will help you to do better on the platform. For me, we have not covered that, but something I would like to see in 2022 is more reasons to spend more time on Sorare's website. SorareData does that very well in the fact that they deploy layers on layers so you need to spend time on SorareData. Once you have your stack then you need to check for injuries and suspensions, etc... Eventually, SorareData can become an aggregator; the only thing you cannot do with SorareData is to buy and sell the cards. Let's see what UX is bringing to the Sorare app and the evolution between Sorare and SorareData that is becoming tighter. Hopefully, we will have more universal places to go, and maybe content creators may share their creations on the platform itself so again, it is one more reason to stay on the Sorare website or/and on the Sorare app.

SorareData is a brilliant platform, and the app is a game-changer. Why do we have SorareData? They can just clone it and include everything there is on SorareData in the game.

YNWA: Yeah, it is a hard one because the game designs and the discussions will take a long time. It's challenging for Sorare to show clearly that some players are superior to other ones. Because we have at the same time on the platform clubs like Liverpool and clubs with big fan bases but lower football performances. Where SorareData does not have this problem is that it is OK for them to say: Lewandowski, is the best player in the world at the moment, Mbappe as well, and this guy in the second division team in Chily... well, he is not good currently and not suitable as these guys.

Huge Success Rate In SO5

My first mission was to have fun. So I decided to invest in every player I like. I held all the players I bought, even if I bought the top and some of them have lost 80% of their value. After buying a lot of Limited players I switched my strategy and decided to analyze what was going on the platform and what are the most valuable assets on the platform. The conclusion is that the more valuable assets on the platforms are U23 goalkeepers. So once I realized that I was just going all-in on that. What I also noticed was that when GKs get minutes, then their value explodes straight away. So even with Limited, at the moment you can buy U23 GKs for 10$, and of course, for the moment, they sit on the bench because they are U23s, but it is obvious that as soon as they will get time, their values will rise.

Hibee: You have also players like Mbappe and Depay, so how do you balance?

Yes, when I joined, they were auctioned at 1 am. So I bought Mbappe Limited #2/1000 for 1.1 ETH on the Secondary Market because I just did not want to stay awake. I'm gonna hold him and hope he will bring more than 1 ETH in the future. Today I think he is worth 0.6 ETH so it is a 50% loss.

YNWA: You said that the downside of your strategy is that some of the players will experience a drop in value. But you have impressive records regarding the cards that you won. Have you found that the combination of XPs has played a role?

I have friends that provided me APIs and stuff to perform so the extra XPs have not made a big difference yet.

YNWA: I think that you see less of this difference with the Limiteds but you see that you need a perfect score to win. We are not there at the moment yet with the Uniques as you still see people with 2 SRs playing and beating 5 Unique.

Hibee: It seems to be very competitive and this will continue I think. That's what we wanted: more users and more challenges.

YNWA: SorareMega has this dice game each week do you think that there are other side games like this that have potential?

Hibee: For myself nope.

I agree the core game needs to be simple. The current game is too way complicated. It needs to become easier to play to onboard new managers.

YNWA: I agree but at the same time, there are people that cannot get high scores because some managers can have DNPs or injured players. So I asked this question because I think that at the same time, you "lose" some managers by providing only a competitive tournament structure. A lot of people have cards that are currently useless and are wondering what the purpose of these cards.

That is right. I played a lot of fantasy sports and in all the games it is happening.

YNWA: I know. But were these platforms using the word "collectible" to advertise? There are no fundamental reasons to keep cards on Sorare if they are not performing.

Hibee: There are lots of users waiting for this collectability aspect, and we have seen the Legends cards. People who bought these cards should have a reason to hold them. I think 2022 is a massive year: +200 managers, a new sport added... We will see what will happen, but I'm confident.

I think there is a lack of information regarding these aspects.

Legends

Hibee: Yeah and maybe a lack of information regarding the future of the Legends as well.

YNWA: Originally it was every day, then every Thursday, then several Thursdays without any Legends... so even the announcement of the Legends was not clear. If it is too much to create a new Region or a special weekly, then it was a bad idea to promise something regarding the Legends. The announcement that Ryan has made is wonderful but I am worried if something as small as a new Tournament structure cannot be done.

Hibee: I'm confident they will turn these cards into something extraordinary.

The first thing is to keep the community happy. Having a DAO could be a super idea. There are a lot of other crypto communities creating DAOs. You can have DAOs for centralized companies like Sorare. The way I think they can use is to say: if you have a Legend card, then you have a seat in the DAO and you can take part in the governance decisions. Anyone in the DAO can submit a proposal for voting so you could say: I propose that the Legends have a special league and can take part in a Special Weekly. Let's say at least 3 Legends and 2 other cards. Then the DAO will vote, and the community will agree or not. It is particularly interesting if you use the money collected from the sales of these Legends cards because you can establish a rule of 5% distribution regarding the Secondary Market sales to incentivize the members of this DAO.

YNWA: It is super interesting because we used DAO at Blackpool. We are all human and will see DNPs, and injuries here and there. So we thought about how can we make better decisions. And we came out with the idea that if we all possess tokens, we all will try to influence the success of the other. On OpenSea and on all the crypto markets, you have at least 2.5% of fees.

Hibee: Lots of good points. But we talk about the complexity of onboarding new users. It feels that without Ramp and the tools to easily convert fiat to crypto, it was hard to conquer the mass market. We need to understand the appetite of the Sorare audience. Are they aware web3 users? Or "simple" football fans?

ETH predictions

I think that now that ETH gas fees are going high. Layers 2 are exploding, and other chains also are profiting from this (Solana, is a great example), and you can see a lot of NFT projects launching on other chains.

There are also companies like Starkware that benefited because they are working on making ETH cheaper and faster. The thing with Sorare is that as Sorare is centralized, if you want to withdraw your card from their wallet, you will have to pay to mint the card. I think that the Layers 2 solutions will see a big boom next year.

In my opinion, there is a link between the prices of the cards and the price of Ethereum. At the moment, the upgrade from ETH 1.0 to ETH 2.0 is in progress. This upgrade will finish next year, so as this upgrade restricts the ETH supply, if everything is going well, then the issuance is gonna be deflationary. Once the upgrade gets launched, traditional investors will invest massively because a great guarantee will now be available. We then might see the price of ETH explodes.

YNWA: What currency would you be confident with? Because in my mind, when I'm thinking about 2020 or 2024, it's 2 years different from now, I asked myself the question: how would be the game if it was based on USDC? ETH was 750$ same time last year. And I'm just thinking back, if the cards were all valued in fiat, I don't think we would have seen this level of inflation in fiat terms. What do you think about that? I personally think that ETH has been the catalyst for a lot of people playing Sorare and saying: "I've made X in fiat". Yes, you have, but you have made that thanks to the success of ETH, in the same period of time as well.

The game economy is ETH, and the early adopters get rewarded because of that. At one point, if Sorare wants to go global, then they need to switch to stablecoins. I've made the computation, and I think that they have 2 years maximum before switching to stablecoins. Let's say 100,000 managers with 0.1 ETH in their accounts. Imagine if ETH rises to 15k$; that is my prediction. I believe that Sorare will need to create a new category 1/10 000 and that the Limited can become Rare.

YNWA: We do not have all the information in our hands, but 2022 will definitely be a huge year. The different motivations and time horizons will not fit with everybody. I think 2022 will be the year to execute what 95% of the managers want. We all want the same thing: the game to succeed and to prosper.

I think the Sorare team is doing a fantastic job, and I am super bullish on it.