Private Sale

• Thursday June 9th, 8pm EST

• 1 pack per wallet

Public Sale

• Friday June 10th, 5pm EST

• 1 pack per wallet

Reveal

• Monday June 13th, 5pm EST

• Open your packs and reveal 5 athlete NFTs

Background - What’s a Starter Pack?

A TeamDiff Starter Pack contains 5 LCS athlete NFTs - one of each position (top, mid, jungle, adc, support) to form a team.

The TeamDiff Starter Pack is a free mint on Polygon, so you can play fantasy free of charge when LCS launches. You’ll only have to pay gas fees, no more than a fraction of a MATIC token.

Once you acquire a pack, you’ll be able to open it and reveal 5 cards a few days after mint. If you’re late, or want more cards, you’ll be able to buy on the secondary market on your choice of NFT marketplace.

Steps

Prerequisite: Have MATIC Tokens in your Polygon Wallet

Read our previous article on converting fiat to MATIC (and USDC) on Polygon to learn about purchasing crypto, bridging, and preparing to join a TeamDiff league.

Step 1: Connect wallet and navigate to Mint page

Click “Connect wallet” in the top right corner to interact with our web3 app. Approve the connection in Metamask and then click “Mint” to arrive on the relevant page.

Step 2: Mint your pack

If you’re on TeamDiff’s Allowlist, you’ll be able to mint a pack on June 9th. Otherwise, wait for the public sale on June 10th. Assuming you’re trying to mint after one of these times, Metamask will quote you a gas (transaction) fee in MATIC to confirm the transaction. It should be somewhere in the .005-.01 MATIC range, so no need to have more than a handful of MATIC tokens to pay for all potential gas fees.

Go ahead and confirm this transaction, and within a minute, you’ll have minted your NFT.

Step 3: View your Starter Pack and tweet us @teamdiffxyz

Congrats! You’re now the proud owner of a TeamDiff Starter Pack. Once your pack is minted, you can check it out on Opensea (there will be a link to do so). In a few days, you’ll be able to open it and reveal 5 athlete NFTs usable in a roster.

Once you see your pack, show it off on Twitter! Make sure to tag @teamdiffxyz so we can show your tweet some love.

Step 4: Open your Starter Pack

On June 12th, you’ll be able to open your starter pack and reveal 5 athlete NFTs that can be used to build your roster. Once packs are opened and you reveal your NFTs, you can sell them on OpenSea and/or buy other cards to build variable rosters within your league(s).

To open, navigate to “Open” tab and burn your starter pack to reveal 5 athlete NFTs. Once your pack is opened, check out your collection on the TeamDiff webapp, and begin building your roster to prepare for the June 17th launch of the LCS summer split.

Questions? DM us on twitter!

• Custodial wallet (i.e. Coinbase)

• Decentralized wallet (i.e. Metamask)

Go sign up for Coinbase if you don’t have an account already - you will buy crypto with a credit card and send it to the right place.

Download Metamask and read through this article to get acquainted.

Step 0.5: Add Polygon to your Metamask

Whether you’re new to Metamask or not, you may need to add the Polygon blockchain to your wallet. Go to Polygonscan and click “Add Polygon Network” in the footer.

Click “Approve” in your wallet to add your Polygon-specific wallet. Metamask will prompt you to “Change Networks” which you may do, and instead of “Ethereum Mainnet” as in the image below, you should see either “Matic Mainnet” or “Polygon Mainnet”. Your wallet can now use and store assets on the Polygon network.

Switch back to “Ethereum Mainnet” for now. You will be transferring assets from one network to another in Step 3, originating from Ethereum.

Step 1: Buy MATIC on a Centralized Exchange

After you’ve created a Coinbase account, you’ll need to connect a bank account and/or credit card to purchase crypto. The reason you’re buying MATIC (Polygon token) from the get-go, and not USDC, is to avoid excess fees and repeat transactions.

When you buy MATIC on a platform like Coinbase, your crypto is stored in what’s called a custodial wallet. This means a third party, in this case Coinbase, has “custody” of your crypto, i.e. they hold the private keys which allow you to execute transactions and can help you recover your account if you forget the password.

Go ahead and buy MATIC using USD by clicking the blue “Buy/Sell” button. Specify that you’re buying MATIC and how much you’d like to buy, in US Dollars. We recommend also buying some Ether for gas (transaction) fees, important in Step 3.

Step 2: Sending MATIC to a Decentralized Wallet

A non-custodial (decentralized) crypto wallet is the key to your digital assets, identity, and currency in web3. Unlike a physical wallet, it doesn’t actually store anything but allows you to access web3 sites and interact with various public blockchains and smart contracts.

Since transactions require transaction (”gas”) fees to execute, you will need some extra crypto in your wallet to make sure your upcoming transactions go through without a hitch. In addition to MATIC, it is wise to purchase some Ether as well, for Ethereum network fees in the next step.

Send your MATIC and Ether to your Metamask wallet by clicking the “Send/Receive” button. Again, you’ll need to specify that you’re sending a specifc token, and to whom (wallet address).

Your wallet’s address can be found under “Account 1”—it’s the 42-character public key that begins with 0x. Copy that directly and paste into Coinbase to avoid sending money to the wrong address. IMPORTANT: double-check the address is correct. Once a transaction is sent, it cannot be undone.

After a minute or two, check the “Assets” tab in your Metamask to see that you’ve received your MATIC and Ether.

Step 3: Bridge MATIC from Ethereum Mainnet to Polygon Network

Since transferring crypto from a custodial (Coinbase) to a non-custodial (Metamask) wallet by default delivers to the Ethereum network, you will need to “bridge” your crypto from one blockchain to another, and make it usable on that blockchain’s network.

Bridging is required because MATIC stored on the Ethereum network is not usable by applications on Polygon and vice versa. Fundamental Labs wrote a great article recently on cross-chain bridges, but this is a rabbithole we won’t go down for now.

In TeamDiff’s case, our dApp is built on Polygon, meaning you’ll need MATIC in your Polygon wallet to interact with the Polygon network (and its fees). To transfer your MATIC assets to Polygon, we’ll need to use that bit of Ethereum you purchased to execute an Ethereum→Polygon bridge.

Navigate to Polygon’s Bridge and connect your Metamask wallet by clicking “sign” when prompted.

Select the token you plan to bridge - in our case MATIC. There will be a small Ethereum transaction fee. Wait for gas fees to be low on Ethereum network (anything below 20 gwei is solid right now), then click “Transfer” and approve the transaction from Metamask.

In about 7 or 8 minutes, the MATIC you just bridged should appear in the “Assets” tab in your Polygon wallet. Congrats! Now you have assets on Polygon, and can interact with Polygon dApps.

Step 4: Convert MATIC to USDC

Now that you have MATIC tokens on Polygon, you can convert them to whatever you need, using Metamask’s built-in swap feature. Remember to keep a few MATIC tokens handy in your Polygon wallet for gas fees. Keeping 5-10 tokens available is sufficient.

Select “swap” on Polygon Mainnet and specify MATIC→USDC. Metamask will quote you a gas fee (in MATIC) to execute the transaction. Since we’re converting to USDC in the final step rather than the beginning, we avoid paying extra Ethereum gas fees. Executing this conversion on Polygon instead is considerably cheaper.

Once you’ve approved this transaction, check your “Assets” tab and you should see a USDC balance. Now you’re ready to join a league and stake your USDC tokens.

TL;DR

Step 1: Buy MATIC, and some Ether (<$30, for gas fees) with a credit card.

Step 2: Send MATIC and Ether to your Ethereum wallet.

Step 3: Bridge MATIC from Ethereum Mainnet to Polygon.

Step 4: Swap MATIC for USDC using Metamask.

Questions? DM us on twitter!

If you learned something, please share :)

A decentralized fantasy esports game and trading card collection - build your “team diff”

Why we’re doing this

NFTs are really fucking cool. To date, most projects have figured out the ownership and collectibility side of NFTs, but the user experience is generally one-dimensional — you can’t do much with them yet.

Any digital item or file can be represented as an NFT, but we are primarily seeing simple images minted as tokens. Taking inspiration from the likes of Axie Infinity, we built a simple game that can be understood by anyone. All you need to play it are trading card NFTs.

• Collectibility + Utility: Wouldn’t it have been nice to pick a Tom Brady or Joe Namath rookie card up when it wasn’t worth very much? Truly. Unfortunately, trading cards just collect dust and take up space when they’re not being admired or flipped. NFTs allow a collectible item to serve a dual purpose in another context, like (fantasy) gaming.

• Ownership + Security: A huge benefit of blockchain is “removing the middle man”. Platform-based games are subject entirely to the will of the game developer. We’re looking to change the narrative here and put the power back into the hands of the players. Our ultimate goal is full transparency. All game mechanics are verifiably on-chain — smart contracts can objectively determine a winner and payouts based on specifications given when the league is created.

• Financial upside: Not only do you have the ability to win pooled tokens (USDC), but your TeamDiff NFTs have value as collectibles. Over time, a lump of coal can turn into a diamond.

There’s so much potential there, and we’re just scratching the surface with one of our core technologies: proxy smart contracts.

Instead of interacting directly with the implementation (main) contract, users have an extra layer of customization with a proxy (upgradeable) contract.

Through proxies, each league inherits base game mechanics from the implementation contract, such that each league is individually fully on-chain — league members interact only with their league(s), not any they aren’t a part of.

More on those later.

Who would want to play this?

We believe traditional fantasy can benefit from crypto by adding on a layer tied to owned assets. You can be rewarded not just for winning a bracket, but also for the collectible value of picking a player before they blow up.

Though our genesis collection tracks the LCS, TeamDiff V1 is a trial run for an on-chain fantasy engine. We’re looking for gamers, fantasy nerds, and the crypto-curious. When it comes time for our NFT drop, we’ll post a step-by-step guide on how to mint a starter pack.

⚙️ How it Works

🎴 Collect

Mint a free starter pack and build your dream roster of Tier 1 Esports athletes from your favorite teams in the LCS. If you’re late to the mint, or want more cards, you’ll be able to buy on the secondary market on your choice of NFT marketplace.

📝 Create

Create or join a fantasy league - up to 8 players per league. The creator of the league can set an optional buy-in with USDC, distributed to the winner(s) of the league at the end of the season.

⚔️ Compete

Set a roster weekly with your NFT cards and compete head-to-head against other players in your league to win pooled tokens (and/or bragging rights).

The TeamDiff Genesis starter pack will be a free mint, so you can try it out free of charge when we drop. You’ll be able to open your pack and reveal 5 cards one week after mint.

We’re on Polygon so you’ll be able to see your TeamDiff starter pack on any one of your favorite NFT marketplaces. That said, supply is limited, so shoot for a spot on our allowlist or get lucky during the public mint window 😉

What’s next?

We’ve been working hard (and stealthily) to bring you a game immediately following the initial NFT drop. Beyond the initial game, our team has lots of ideas. Tracking the LCS Summer split with TeamDiff Genesis is just our MVP.

Some ideas for the future:

• Upgradeable and customizable athlete NFTs

• Customizable game mechanics, side quests, and flexibility to support more games

• Potential partnerships with game studios and creators

For now, see you on the waitlist. Drop your ENS in the Typeform for a surprise 😉

Thank YOU

If you’ve read this far, you’re gmi. This wouldn’t be possible without the support of friends and early supporters.

Feedback is HUGE for the future of this project, and we looking forward to building with all of you to make our contracts, and game, even better. Hit us up anytime via discord, email, or in the Twitter DMs.