The co-founder of French technology unicorn Sorare discussed the major innovations that may be brought about by the development of the NFT industry.
The Web Summit 2021, the world’s largest technology conference, opened on Monday in Lisbon, Portugal, and will continue until Thursday. Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas said at the opening ceremony: “My dream is that Lisbon will become the world’s innovation capital.” At the same time, Portuguese Finance Minister João Leão said:
Portugal is a suitable place to live, invest and do business, and it is also achieving this in an open, tolerant and multicultural way.
Famous speakers include Facebook leaker Frances Haugen, Black Lives Matter co-founder Ayo Tometi, and French NFT fantasy game company Sorare co-founder and CEO Nicholas Julia.
NFT is a digital ownership certificate representing artworks, images, videos, music, etc. They are stored in digital wallets, and actual assets can be stored on-chain or off-chain depending on their size. Sorare enables players to manage their own teams through digital player cards minted as NFTs. These cards can be bought, sold and transferred.
When asked about the development prospects of the NFT industry in the next 5 to 10 years, Julia said:
NFT will become the basic technology for all valuable things on the Internet. It may be monetary value, or it may be personal value. I mentioned your identity before, so this is what NFT can bring you on the Internet. It will be intangible.
Sorare was founded in Paris three years ago, and its valuation has grown from US$270 million to US$4.3 billion. In September of this year, Japanese multinational group SoftBank (SoftBank) led its latest round of financing. According to Julia, half a million users joined the platform without any marketing. At present, more than 200 football clubs around the world cooperate with Sorare. According to the company’s profile on the NFT market OpenSea, the cumulative transaction volume of Sorare cards has exceeded 50,200 ETH.
But Sorare is also looking to expand its gaming business beyond NFT. Julia made the following statement in this regard:
We want people to feel the benefits of it, you really own your digital goods, you can move it, and so on, without the friction that most current encryption products have-it’s complicated. I think this is a technology that will support all valuable things on the Internet.