Web3 Fantasy Football 101: The Basics Every Beginner Needs to Know
You’ve probably heard of fantasy football leagues the utilize web3, but you might not know exactly what that means. Fortunately, you now have a helpful guide to get started.
If you’re reading this article, we’re willing to bet that you either want to join a league this season. Either way, here are some tips to get started. Keep reading for more information.
What is Web3 Fantasy Football?
Fantasy football is a game where you choose real-life NFL players, who are then scored based on their real-life performance. You can play fantasy football online, in a league with friends, or in a casual setting with strangers. Fantasy football isn’t just one game, there are many types of fantasy football games you can play.
For the purposes of this article, we are going to focus on Season-Long Managed Fantasy Football. That is, where you create a team that you manage throughout the season, while competing in weekly head to head matchups against other teams in your league. This is the original format of fantasy sports.
Web3 Fantasy Football takes the game and utilizes different components like tokenization, smart contracts, and deFi to create a more efficient and entertainment game for players in a league. Web3 can also add new elements to Fantasy Football leagues, like on-chain voting to manage disputes during the season.
At its best, web3 should only enhance the game experience, not take away from it. Remember, this is supposed to be fun.
This also means that your players are ultimately tied to your wallet address. So, losing access to that wallet means you lose access to your team. You can’t simply reset your password and regain access to your team.
At leagueDAO we’re passionate about developing web3 Fantasy Sports leagues that make watching sports more entertaining. Since we launched in August 2021, we’ve built/deployed several different game models that utilize Web3 in a different and unique way.
The Basic Rules of Fantasy Football
Before you start, you’ll want to know the basics of how fantasy football works so you know what to expect.
There are a lot of different ways to play, but they all follow a similar pattern. You choose your players in a draft, and you can get a new team every year. Each player on your team will have a certain number of points they’ll get you each week. Depending on the team you’re competing against each week you’ll need to score more points. You will get to draft a team of real-life NFL players and score points based on their real-life performance. You’d create a team and then you’d use your team to compete against other people’s virtual teams and try to win some money.
There are 4 key components to Fantasy Football:
- Drafting your players
- Managing your lineup and roster
- Adding free agents to your team during the season
- Claiming your Prizes at the end of the season/week
In LeagueDAO’s fantasy football league, your players are NFTs that you hold in your wallet. When you draft your team, you are in effect claiming the NFTs of those players. To manage which of your players are in your Lineup each week, you will stake and un-stake those player NFTs in the League dApp. Tokenizing the Players lets the League’s smart contract system calculate points and scores for your matchups each week.
How to Join a League
Joining a league is the best way to get started with fantasy football, but you’ll want to find the right league. The first thing to do is find a league where you feel like you’re a part of a community. Fantasy football is a social game, and you want to be in a league where you can build relationships. Remember, each league will have different rules, so you’ll want to read up on the specifics of each one so you know what to expect.
We’re admittedly biased, but recommend LeagueDAO’s web3 Fantasy Football league, the Mega League. Instead of running the league on a legacy web2 platform, we’re running the league on the our very own app that our team built over the past 12 months!
The prize pool for our Fantasy Football League grows everyday and the league champion could win over $50,000!
With the LeagueDAO Fantasy Football League, you’re not just competing for a share of a prize at the end of the season, you’re joining a community of Web3 and sports fans from around the world.
LeagueDAO’s Fantasy League Format/Rules
- ENTRY FEE: $300
- FORMAT: Season long; H2H matchups
- DURATION: Regular season Weeks 1–15. Division Playoffs Weeks 16–17.
- SCORING SYSTEM: PPR (This means standard scoring plus 1.0 Point Per Reception)
- LEAGUE CAPACITY: No Cap
- STARTING LINEUPS: 1-QB, 2-RB, 3-WR, 1-TE, 1-Flex
- ROSTERS: Twenty (20) total roster spots
- DIVISION SIZE: 12 Teams Per Division
- DIVISION FORMATION: Teams are randomly assigned to a Divisio
- DRAFT TYPE & LENGTH: 20 round online snake draft
- DRAFT DATE: August 28th, 2022
Sign up is easy (and decentralized) you can join by purchasing a LeaguePass NFT Today!
https://leaguedao.com/leaguepass
Rookie Mistakes to Avoid
Web3 or not, if this is your first time joining a fantasy football league, then there are some rookie mistakes you’ll want to avoid.
- Getting caught up in buzzy and often crazy new strategies
- Forgetting to check your team each week (remember there are games on Thursdays, not just Sundays and Mondays)
- Dropping good players after a few bad weeks
- Not keeping track of injury news (sometimes players won’t be listed as injured until right before their game is scheduled to begin)
However, the most important thing is to not get too caught up in your first fantasy football experience. Fantasy football can be stressful. At some point you have to step back and remember that the ultimate performance of your team is out of your control. Nothing you can do can impact what happens on the field, so once your lineup is set sit back and enjoy jumping from game to game to watch your players.
Remember that this is supposed to be fun!
A Few Tips and Tricks for Beginners
If you want to become a better fantasy football player, there are a few ways you can do it.
First, you want to be aware of your league’s rules. Different leagues have different scoring rules, and you’ll want to know how your scoring works. If your scoring rules are confusing, you may want to pick up a fantasy football guide.
Second, you’ll also want to be aware of bye weeks. Bye weeks are the weeks when some players on your team don’t play, and you’ll want to know which players are on bye weeks.
Third, you’ll also want to keep an eye on your team’s projections. Projections are a good way to figure out how your team is expected to do. You can find projections on a lot of different websites. You can also try to predict which players will have good games. If you find a few players who are expected to have good games, you can try to put them on your team.
Final Words
Fantasy football is a great way to enjoy NFL games even if you’re not a huge football fan. It’s a fun way to engage with football and enjoy your Sundays even more. Fantasy football is perfect for beginners, as all you need to do is pick players, and the rest is up to them. Fantasy football is the most accessible sport in the world.
If you want to get started with web3 fantasy football, the best thing to do is join a league, like LeagueDAO.
Join the league by purchasing a LeaguePass NFT before 8/23!
