Scaling Sorare's NFT Platform with CEO & Co-Founder, Nicolas Julia

Hey Bankless Nation, happy state of the nation. This is an episode where David do I have a deep dive on a topic that's been making headlines recently. David, I feel like we are on a redemption arc today because uh we are notoriously not into sports. At least we haven't provided good sports coverage on bankless in the past. Uh, but today we are talking all about sports and the blockchain, sports and crypto.

I can get behind.

So I at least I can get behind 50% of this. But we know there are a ton of sports fans in the bankless community. How do we know? Because you've pointed out our mistakes and you've told us. This is an episode on the future of on-chain sports, with I think an organization and a project that is doing more in crypto sports uh than anyone else. Uh, these are the folks behind So Rare.

They started with football uh in the EU, and uh there'd be soccer for for us Americans, and have since expanded, and this is recent news, to the NBA. This is a recent announcement from them, also to Major League Baseball. So, David, what are we going to be talking about today?

I think this is going to be part of the overarching story, also timely with the whole Reddit um phenomenon where Reddit put like NFTs into three million people's hands. How did they do that? And so it's a story, I think, of Ethereum, of blockchains, layer twos, NFTs finding their ways into communities that are like outside of crypto Twitter, outside of just like these deep NFT deep gen communities and are more mainstream, right? Sports are mainstream. And So Rare unquestionably has discovered product market fit at the intersection of sports and crypto, which seems like at you know, a cursory glance, a weird intersection, right? Sports, crypto, what does this have to do with each other? Uh and so we're gonna answer this question as to why So Rare has found product market fit here in the intersection of the nerds and the jocks, if you will. And like what it really takes. What's the secret sauce behind these things? And what lessons can we pull away from the product market fit that So Rare has seen?

We usually do disclosures at this point in the episode. Disclosure. There are no disclosures. No disclosures. David nor myself own any equity or tokens in a So Rare. Although David

Survey of cards. I don't even o own a Surveyor Fantasy card.

There's uh there's a sad story behind that in that um I I was actually offered the opportunity to uh be an angel investor in So Rare. And guess what? I turned it down because I didn't know enough about sports.

So, my uh sports, you know, lack of knowledge, ignorance has hurt me a lot over the years, apparently as well. David, before we get into this episode, let's give a shout out to our friends and sponsors. All right, David, what should people look out for in this episode? I know this is partially a story about um product market fit and crypto, but I also feel like there's a layer two story behind uh So Rare. What uh what are some of the things people should be on the lookout for?

Yeah, so I want to ask uh Nicholas about just the usability in UX and how, like in the world, if you go onto Reddit right now and you go like, I like NFTs, you get 10,000 down votes. So I want to I want to learn about like how the word NFT in crypto has been accepted by this community that is seemingly outside of the crypto community. How far outside the crypto community is it? And what is the secret sauce behind why product market fit has happened has been seen at SORAR? And what can we, what lessons can we learn to apply that to other fields? So like there's one, there's one part a layer two conversation, there's one part an NFT conversation, there's one part a gamification uh uh uh part because that is what SORARE is. It is fantasy, it's a fantasy game built on top of actual real sports. Uh and so how did all of these things come together and how can we leverage these the secret sauce to apply to other projects out in the crypto space? So that's the thing to pay attention to, right?

Definitely a lot of lessons for us here. Guys, we'll be right back with Nicholas Julia, who is the co-founder and CEO of So Rare. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.

Alright, guys, we are back with Nicholas Julia. He is the co founder and CEO of So Rare. They are building the next generation of sports games where fans can play with skin in the game. This is a mix of fantasy sports and also NFT collectibles, uh, sort of tokenized cards that you can actually own. Nicholas, welcome to Bankless. How are you doing, man?

Thank you. Thank you, Ryan, for having me. I'm very excited to have this chat with you today.

Oh, me too. Do you know it was uh you tweeted this out right before, and this was a memory I'd forgot forgotten this email right before we started. This is uh an email that you sent me, I think like uh is it four years ago now?

Yeah, four years ago. Yeah, it was in 18, I think.

And this is when you first started getting into NFTs. And this was an email you sent me. You said, Hey Ryan, I just read your tweet storm about NFTs. This was back in 2018, and I guess I was tweeting about NFTs. Yeah. Um, we had we're just kind of conceptualizing them, I feel I feel like, as an industry. And you said you're excited uh about it at the debate to determine which underlying protocol is going to win the NFT war.

Oh I remember this era of crypto where we thought a single protocol would win the NFT war, huh?

Yeah. And then you said you're fully dedicated to crypto. You had some ideas on it. Uh and my how far you and So Rare have come since then. Um, can you just take us through the last four years of what you've built and what So Rare has accomplished, maybe some of the stats, and take us from this conversation all the way to So Rare today.

No, of course. I mean, when when I was, you know, like uh starting to look at NFT, so early 18, end of 17, early 18,

I was uh sorry, I was fascinated by the fact that they're gonna bring digital property to the web.

And you know, I I was I I I was I keep on digging, digging, and I was uh looking at this cool feature, which is digital scarcity and what it could bring to collectors and uh

You know, human beings have been collecting in the in the physical space for centuries. And uh I was convinced that this behavior uh is going to apply to the to the web. I'm a massive sports fan, so I was dreaming to bring all the athletes and teams and leagues on top of it and you know, like develop uh officially licensed uh NFT cards

representing the players, the teams that we love.

And um

Look, I was convinced that just this would be 10 times bigger than physical collecting because it's you know you have provable scarcity, true ownership.

Uh, it's easier to trade, it's easier to show to your community. There's many, many reasons why I was thinking about that.

But uh I was also thinking that for that to be huge, really mainstream, and reach hundreds of millions of fans across the globe,

um, we would need to bring a usage value that is beyond collecting, right? So that's where the fantasy game or the game uh uh pilon is coming from.

Having a way, uh a cool way for fans every day, every week uh to engage with the card. So we we got started at this intersection of you know this emerging technology NFTs,

um official like official partnerships with the top IP in the world of sports, uh, and then gaming. Uh so got started with uh with Socorro, as you said, uh and uh and uh you know now we have like more than two million two million users and plus to million users.

Users.

Yeah, half a million active uh on a on a monthly basis. So that's uh that that has been a strong start, I would say. Yeah. We

And can I can I ask, by the way, because um

Uh are they still active? Like have they felt this like bear market at all? Yeah. User base? How does that how does that look these days versus like a year ago when the crypto market was booming?

no, I think I think that if you look even at CryptoSlam or any NFT tracker, right, you you would find that uh

um you know at uh before the big market, we were like in terms of sales volume, like we were somewhere between the 15th and 20th position with all the profile peak

NFTs being you know topping this um this list. I think.

If you look uh at the last week, uh if we are not at the top, uh so that's today, I think that we are looking. If uh you go at the top, you can you can a bit uh above above that uh

yeah, higher. Yeah, if you look at seven days, we are pre we are at the top.

Uh and uh and I think that speaks to the fact that uh we we kept on uh we kept on growing during this peer market. Uh if you look at all the metrics like uh new users, sales, and and so on.

So that's I think that's encouraging. And that speaks to the fact that when you do something beyond collecting, beyond trading, I think you you you are more resilient because people have fun, people express their passion, their identity as fans, and they you know they keep on using and playing with the cons uh despite the fact that the markets are going down.

So I just want for folks that are listening to this, maybe can't see. We are on a website called CryptoSlam that is tracking uh NFT collections by various metrics and in terms of sales, in terms of transactions. And this is so rare on a seven week uh or seven day period of time, leading the pack in terms of sales. Nine volume.

Yeah.

Sales volume, 9 million in sales volume.

But also completely dominated on unique number of transactions coming in at 154,000 transactions over the last seven days in comparison to Bored Apes coming in at 78. Uh Gaussian Chained also kind of in a similar category versus a collectible that I would say a similar category versus us over air, 177,000 transactions, and then down to CryptoPunks, where you see 44. So you can really see the division of the categories here.

Yeah, I think like one point important, like one important point here is that this uh this is only tracking our secondary transactions. Uh and so that there's uh there's a significant volume of transactions uh and sales that is coming from the primary market, the the cost that we sell for the first time as well. Uh and that that's also only tracking the the paying users that are engaging with NFCs. Uh, but we we are we have a significant number of users that are engaging with the free to play game uh and engaging with the fantasy uh this this way.

What what I think is really neat here is because um you you uh Subware has not suffered

uh a decline in the way that Bord Board Apes has or even CryptoPunks have, because this is sort of um a real world fan base that is not as tied to like crypto speculative markets. And so what we talk so often about in in crypto about uh real world use cases, you know, that like normies would actually use. Well, this is one of them, guys. Like people who are into sports, which is basically everyone that you know.

like, you know, is into some uh sport, right? All of the normal people that you know. Except for David and I

Well, but you know what? It's the only reason David and I like uh David used to be w who'd you say? Like you're you're a big sports fan, like

Oh yeah, Mar like

kind of like

Seattle Mariners with 1999 to 2001, 2002. Yeah.

So I grew up in Canada in the Toronto area, huge Trauma Leafs fan. I used to follow it like my entire childhood, up until like uh, you know, I was uh out of college and such. And I just haven't had time lately because like crypto has kind of dominated my life. So, anyway, tons of sports fans, real world use case, uh, and it does well even when crypto prices are down. This is quite a testament. And look at those transactions, right? We'll have other questions about how are you actually scaling this, but I just want uh folks to see kind of the volume and uh the level that's going on in the NFT world, and all of this is happening kind of behind the scenes uh quietly.

Yeah.

And Nicholas, I I wanna uh parse out two or three things that I think that you definitely noticed very, very early. Things like that you picked out earlier than than most other people. And that was uh

NFTs. In 2018, NFTs were a theory, not practice. But also scale. And I'm pretty sure Sovere started off understanding that, yo, the Ethereum layer one's not going to do it for us. And then also X extra crypto communities. And so you kind of slammed these three particles together. NFTs, a community that's outside of crypto, call it the sports world, the sports community, and NFTs. And maybe there are some other things as well, but I really think that's what some of the secret sauce is behind so rare success is that it identified these three things and the potential here way ahead of schedule back in 2018, 2019. What about those three things were obvious to you? Like what would did it would did it feel obvious at the time, or just can you go through the thought process as to kind of how you put all these things together?

Yeah, I think I think uh from the very first day I was like because I remember in 1718, like uh the very small NFT community was that there was a debate whether we should you know like uh simplify the user experience or keep this clunky experience of you know like setting setting up a wallet and like this, I don't know, between 15 and 20 steps before you can buy a crypto punk, right? And and so part of the community was thinking this is education, like when the users need to go through it, it's a feature, not a bug, all of that.

And I was like, no, I think you know, if we want to really like uh reach like millions, dozens of millions of users, we need we need we need to abstract the complexity and deliver the benefits uh of NFT collectibles to to the mainstream. And so

and so the benefits for us in our in our case are like the digital scarcity, so the collectibility, uh the true ownership, the fact that you can sell your card freely, the fact that you can move it to other games and outside of the platform and so on.