Nicolas Julia, the CEO of the fantasy sports crypto platform Sorare, expressed his continued confidence in Ethereum, despite the company’s decision to migrate to Solana, which he considers an “upgrade.”
Last Thursday, Sorare announced its transition from Ethereum after six years, aiming to leverage Solana’s scalability and user-oriented base. The platform will transfer over 10 sports games and their trading cards to Solana.
“This isn’t a replacement; it’s an upgrade,” Sorare stated at the announcement. Julia further elaborated to Cointelegraph that Solana is the most promising blockchain in the fantasy sports crypto space, leading in revenue, daily active users, active developers, and total value locked. While Solana is more centralized compared to Ethereum, it emphasizes scalability and security.
“The increasing adoption of [Solana] confirms that this was the right decision,” Julia mentioned, emphasizing Solana’s progress, particularly since it launched five years later than Ethereum.
The migration is anticipated to be finalized by the end of this month.
Despite this transition, Julia maintains that Sorare has not wavered in its faith in the Ethereum ecosystem.
“We are still very optimistic about it,” Julia affirmed, adding that the company will continue to support Ethereum users through an integration with the Base network and will allow Ether (ETH) deposits.
Sorare, which boasts 5 million users and was valued at $4.3 billion in October 2021, is among the several prominent crypto protocols that have opted to migrate from their initial blockchain to facilitate growth.
Notable transitions to Solana include decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch and crypto indexing protocol The Graph, which have also moved away from Ethereum in recent years.
Sorare is a fantasy sports platform primarily centered on football, but also offers basketball and baseball, allowing users to buy, sell, and trade officially licensed digital player cards as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Users can assemble teams using these cards and compete in weekly tournaments, earning rewards based on the actual performance of players.
Sports tokens have lagged behind this bull cycle
Other competitors in this arena include Flow, Chiliz, and the Dapper Labs-backed NBA Top Shot. The DraftKings Marketplace was also notable before its closure in July 2024.
Currently, the market cap for sports crypto tokens stands at $1.17 billion, a significant decline from the 2021-2022 bull cycle, according to CoinGecko data.
Sorare NFTs have also faced challenges amid the broader downturn in the NFT market, with their floor price dropping from a peak of $91.25 in early April 2022 to $2.21 as of October 12, according to DappRadar data.
Daily sales of Sorare NFTs have maintained consistency, with sales ranging from 5,000 to 30,000 on most days, similar to levels observed in 2022.
Sorare to adopt a multichain approach
In light of the migration, Julia mentioned he is exploring other high-speed blockchains that can further scale Sorare’s sports trading cards.
“We’ve considered numerous options and will continue to monitor the development of high-performance ecosystems like Sui and Aptos, while remaining confident in Solana’s current direction.”
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Additionally, Sorare is integrating Layer0 to facilitate marketplace payments seamlessly across Solana and Base, as part of its strategy to become chain-agnostic and capitalize on the strengths of multiple ecosystems.
Sorare is not concerned with Solana’s network outages
Julia remarked that he isn’t overly worried about Sorare experiencing a Solana network outage, noting that over the years, his team has grown “well accustomed to navigating the inevitable challenges that arise with blockchain infrastructure.”
“We have been greatly reassured by the quality of Solana’s technology, the team behind it, and the network’s recent performance in terms of stability,” Julia stated.
He pointed out that network outages have become less frequent over time and are quickly resolved, reflecting the Solana ecosystem’s capability to improve at “remarkable speed.”
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