- OpenSea is a leading non-fungible token ( NFT ) trading platform launched in 2017 in New York.
- The platform’s main advantages are support for multiple blockchains, a royalty program for NFT creators, and the ability to mint non-fungible tokens for free using the Polygon network.
- OpenSea features popular NFT collections and a variety of digital art, ranging from illustrations of famous people and meme creators to digital lands in the metaverse.
Who launched the platform and when?
The NFT trading platform was founded by Devin Finzer (current CEO) and Alex Atallah. In early 2022, Forbes named them the first dollar billionaires in the NFT industry, estimating their net worth at $2.2 billion.
OpenSea team was inspired to create the marketplace by the success of the CryptoKitties NFT game, which at that time accounted for the lion’s share of all transactions on the Ethereum network.
The real popularity came to OpenSea along with the explosive growth of the NFT sphere in 2021. In particular, the project team has brought popular collections to their platform, including Bored Ape Yacht Club, Axie Infinity, and Decentraland. Just a year, the volume of trading on the marketplace increased by more than 640 times – up to $14.6 billion, and the share of OpenSea in the total volume of trade in non-fungible tokens exceeded 90%.
July closed a $100 million Series B round led by venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). At the end of 2021, the team held another investment round, as a result of which they expected to receive an assessment of $10 billion. Still, the project was valued more expensively, at $13.3 billion.
At the beginning of 2022, OpenSea entered the Forbes Fintech 50 list, and TIME magazine included the marketplace among the 100 most influential companies worldwide.
How does OpenSea work?
At the beginning of the project’s development, the team called the site an eBay online store, but for NFT. Today OpenSea is the largest marketplace for buying, selling, and creating collections of non-fungible tokens.
The infrastructure for creating NFTs on the platform is suitable for beginners and advanced users. Please read our guide to learn how to independently create and release your NFT on OpenSea without programming skills.
To create an account on the site, you need to connect to one of the 16 supported cryptocurrency wallets: MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet, Wallet Connect, Fortmatik, Phantom, and so on.
On the main page of the OpenSea website, NFT statistics and various categories are available: art, collections, domain names, music, photos, virtual lands, in-game assets, memes, and more.
Why is the OpenSea platform so popular?
The site has several advantages, making it attractive and popular for users.
One of the main advantages is support for several blockchains at once: Polygon, Klaytn, and Solana. In the future, the developers plan to add the Flow and Tezos networks, which are popular in the NFT space.
One of the main advantages is that OpenSea users can issue NFTs for free using the Polygon network without having to pay for gas in Ethereum.
Another advantage is that the NFT creator can activate the royalty function and receive up to 10% of the token’s value from each transaction after it has been sold to other holders.
How to buy NFT on OpenSea?
Open the main page of the OpenSea website and go to the Explore section to see the digital works on the site. The collections are categorized. The most popular lately are in the Trending tab.
You can filter works by status, price range, quantity, blockchain, category, and other parameters in the menu on the left side of the web page.
Status (Status) NFT provides a choice between new non-fungible tokens (New), Auction (On Auction), or those that are not sold at Auction but at a fixed price (Buy Now).
Click on any image to see detailed information about NFT. On the next page, you can immediately proceed to the purchase by clicking the Buy now button or offer your price for the selected non-fungible token through the Make offer function.
Why is the project criticized?
At the beginning of 2022, the platform introduced a release limit; the user could place no more than 5 collections consisting of 50 NFTs. But a day later, the innovation was canceled due to numerous complaints.
The platform administration explained the decision to introduce restrictions because 80% of the works on the site plagiarized well-known collections or are fake.
After some time, OpenSea implemented several solutions to combat fraud and plagiarism. According to the project team, this should reduce the number of violations of intellectual property rights.
How has crypto winter affected OpenSea?
According to CoinGecko, 2022 was one of the worst years in the history of the cryptocurrency market. This trend has also affected the trading of non-fungible tokens.
According to The Block analysts, in June 2022, the total volume of NFT trading decreased by 74%, amounting to $1.04 billion against $4 billion in May 2021. Analyst platform Dune gives an even lower figure for the same period – just $0.5 billion.
At the same time, data from The Block suggests that two-thirds of the total amount of transactions falls on OpenSea, thanks to which it remains the leading trading platform in its segment.
As a result of the decline in activity, the project team announced in July 2022 that they were laying off 20% of their employees.
