What is this site? Why does everyone know about her? Is it true that such a giant is losing its power?
Here you will find answers to all these questions.
Creation
The platform for the NFT OpenSea was created on December 20, 2017. To understand these dark times, I will say that the well-known collection of CryptoPunks was released a few months before.
The principle of operation is straightforward – a commission of 2.5% from each transaction.
The platform was founded by two friends – Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah. The second recently announced that he was leaving the company, justifying this by saying that he wants to create something from scratch again.
After 2 years of hard work, the site begins to give results. The mark of 1.8 million dollars of monthly volume has been overcome. The total volume of transactions at that time amounted to more than 7 million. At the same time, OpenSea receives 2.1 million investments from various funds, including Animoca Brands. By this time, the share of the total NFT volume on the site approached 70%.
Where does the popularity come from?
OpenSea has become a pioneering platform for buying and selling NFTs. This became one of the critical factors so that by 2021 when the NFT trend began, the site was already ready to accept all users. This caused the volume of transactions to exceed $14 billion in 2021. This is 646 times more than in 2020. Now, 9 out of 10 of all NFTs went through OpenSea. It is also possible to create your own NFTs on this site for free, which is pretty simple. This was both a plus and a minus for the project because many began to make fakes of famous collections, deceiving users.
Looking at the OpenSea NFT transaction volume graph of those years, one can trace the long and challenging path of the project, as well as the development path of the NFT sphere in principle.
In January 2022, OpenSea closed another round of funding for $300 million, and the project itself was valued at $13 billion. It was the peak.
What Now?
At the moment, OpenSea is not so rosy and looks tired. There are fewer than 200,000 active users; in December, this number was more than 550,000. Of course, this is due to the phase of the market, but this does not negate the fact that users have cooled off a little towards the site.
It’s safe to say that OpenSea has become a monopoly and stopped noticing everything around. They receive huge investments and hire the best employees but completely forget about the support of authors, advertising, etc. Not so long ago, the CEO laid off 20% of the staff, justifying this by saying that now is a bear market and there is not enough money. It sounds a little strange because the market recently was on horseback.
In the spring, OpenSea tried to bite off a piece of the Solana pie and implemented its support on the site. It seemed to everyone such a significant event that the $SOL token rose by 50%. However, expectations were not met, and Magic Eden remained the leading marketplace on this blockchain. It looks like OpenSea has given up. Now Magic Eden is hitting back with a collection on its launchpad that can be bought with Ethereum. It will be very soon, and maybe OpenSea will have to give up its place. On the other hand, such competition will benefit both marketplaces.
There is a small “beef” between the two giants; you can follow it here.
