Sorare CEO Hypes Ethereum has upgraded to Solana
Nicolas Julia, CEO of fantasy sports crypto platform Sorare, said the company will continue to rely on Ethereum even as it prepares to migrate to Solana — a transition he called “improving.”
Last Thursday, Sorare announced it would be moving away from Ethereum after six years, citing Solana's expansion and consumer-focused user base. The company will move more than 10 sports games and their trading cards to Solana.
“This is not a replacement, but an upgrade,” Sorare said at the time. Julia later explained to Cointelegraph that Solana is the most viable chain, which leads the fantasy sport crypto in revenue, daily active addresses, active developers and total value locked. Although more centralized than Ethereum, blockchain prioritizes scalability and security.
“[Solana’s] The growing adoption shows that this bet was correct, Julia explained that five years after its launch, a lot of ground has been covered on Ethereum.
The migration is expected to be completed by the end of this month.
Despite the persecution, Julia Sorare has not lost faith in the Ethereum ecosystem.
“We're going to stay very aggressive on it,” Julia said, explaining that the integration on the Base network will continue to support Ethereum users and still allow Ether (ETH) deposits.
Sorare, which has 5 million users and was valued at $4.3 billion in October 2021, is one of several blue-chip cryptocurrencies that have made a strong call to migrate off-chain in order to continue growing.
Decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch and crypto indexing protocol Graph are two other popular crypto applications that have migrated from Ethereum to Solana in recent years.
Sorare is a fantasy sports platform focused primarily on football, but also features basketball and baseball, where users can buy, sell and trade officially licensed digital playing cards as non-fungal tokens. With these cards, you can create teams and compete in weekly tournaments, earning rewards based on real-world player performance.
Sports signals are lagging behind this bull cycle.
Other competitors in the space include Flow, Chiliz, and NBA Top Shot, powered by Dapper Labs. The DraftKings marketplace was popular even before it shut down in July 2024.
The market value of sports crypto tokens is currently set at $1.17 billion, which is the biggest drop since the 2021-2021 bull cycle, CoinGecko data shows.
Sore NFTs have also struggled amid the broader NFT market slump, with their floor price falling from $91.25 at the start of April 2022 to $2.21 on October 12, Dapradar data shows.
Daily Soarer NFT sales continue to be steady, with most days ranging from 5,000 to 30,000 sales – similar to what was seen in 2022.
Following a multi-chain approach
Despite the migration, Julia considers other high-speed chains that help to extend Sorare's sports trading cards as much as possible.
“We have looked at many options and will continue to closely monitor the evolution of high-performing ecosystems such as Sui and Aptos. For now, we are confident in Solana's direction.”
Related: Investors target ‘fun-first' crypto games as funds jump 94% in July
As part of its plan to become chain-agnostic and leverage the strengths of multiple ecosystems, it is integrating Layer0 into Solana and Base to seamlessly run marketplace payments.
Sorare is not worried about Solana's network outages.
Julia said Sorare isn't overly concerned about Solana falling victim to network outages, adding that over the years his team has become “well used to the inevitable glitches that come with blockchain infrastructure.”
“We're further reassured by the quality of Solana's technology, the team behind it and the network's recent track record of stability,” Julia said.
Stating that network outages are becoming less frequent and resolved more quickly, Solana's ecosystem demonstrates its ability to evolve at an “incredible rate.”
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