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OpenSea: All You Need to Know About the Largest NFT Marketplace

Updated on 26 August, 2022 5:02 PM
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    People are shelling out millions of dollars to own NFTs, which are available almost everywhere these days. OpenSea is the first and to date the largest NFT marketplace in the world. Built on the belief that NFTs are the future, OpenSea is a decentralized marketplace for purchasing and selling NFTs, having a current market value of about $13 billion.

    What is OpenSea?

    The first and largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, allows you to trade a variety of unique digital items. In addition to digital art, a wide range of other digital products are also available, including domain names, collectibles, avatars, gaming equipment, and even digital versions of real-world assets. Built on Ethereum, this decentralized market is by far the biggest and most well-known among the few NFT marketplaces.

    Putting it simply, OpenSea is like Amazon for virtual worlds and all types of digital commodities. 

    Who are the founders of OpenSea?

    Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah founded OpenSea in December 2017. They both had prior start-up experience. 

    The CTO of OpenSea, Atallah, earned a computer science degree from Stanford in 2014. Afterward, Atallah worked as a software engineer for Palantir and Zugata. He was the founder of Whatsgoodly, a social polling platform that he expanded to over 300,000 users in 2016. 

    Finzer, the CEO of OpenSea, has his mathematics degree from Brown University. In 2016, he introduced Claimdog and before launching OpenSea, he successfully sold it to Credit Karma, where he worked as an engineering manager.

    Finzer developed an interest in cryptocurrencies and blockchain and ultimately decided he wanted to make it his profession. Atallah and Finzer came up with some fundamental concepts, and they submitted an application to the business accelerator Y Combinator, which gave them $120,000 in seed funding.

    Their original endeavor, Wificoin, was based on using blockchain technology to share Wi-Fi bandwidth. The two creators introduced OpenSea in February 2018. $2 million was invested in the business by some prominent cryptocurrency investors such as 1confirmation, Founders Fund, and Blockchain Capital.

    Initially, OpenSea's main source of revenue came from game creators looking for more ways to commercialize their game characters, such as CryptoKitties. In 2019, OpenSea continued to expand its feature set while collaborating with a variety of creators and developers, such as Fox Entertainment to create NFTs with a Deadpool theme. This aided the platform's financial success. By the end of the year, OpenSea had assumed the top spot in the NFT market.

    How does OpenSea work?

    OpenSea is used by thousands of people to find, buy, and sell unusual digital collectibles. This includes everything from digital artwork, music, and domain names to gaming-related products.

    On OpenSea, purchasing NFTs is mostly carried out via Ethereum blockchain technology. The Klatyn chain has also been added to the platform. Additionally, OpenSea employs the Ethereum layer-2 protocol Polygon (MATIC) to reduce trading expenses and speed up deal execution.

    On OpenSea, users can trade NFTs using 150 different currencies or the Ethereum Token Ether (ETH). On OpenSea, you can trade NFTs by paying the fixed price listings or by declining the set price listings and placing a bid. Users can make purchases and sales by connecting their cryptocurrency wallets to the platform.

    How does OpenSea make money?

    OpenSea doesn't charge anything to list or mint an NFT despite its large trading volume. Until the initial transaction is made, the NFT is not added to the blockchain, this is called Lazy minting.

    However, OpenSea does not always cover transaction fees, commonly referred to as gas fees. Two transaction gas fees are required from first-time sellers to set up their accounts. Additionally, there are gas costs associated with selling an item, which must be covered by either the customer when buying fixed-price items or the seller when accepting offers.

    OpenSea generates revenue through service charges. Every time a digital item is sold on the site, a charge of 2.5 percent is taken.

    Competition

    For OpenSea, transaction volumes increased one hundredfold in just six months of 2021. In August 2021, trade volume surpassed $3.08 billion on a daily basis, an 800% increase from the previous month. Daily volumes were over $10 million. OpenSea had more than tripled this amount by November 2021, crossing the $10 billion threshold.

    The past January was OpenSea’s most engaging month yet. It recorded a trading volume of about $5 billion a month, surpassing its last high in August of 2021. This indicates that the business has already outperformed more established art dealers, such as the renowned British auction firm Christie's, which made about $6 billion in sales. OpenSea has so far secured $427 million in fundraising over 9 rounds, and on January 4th, they closed their $300 million Series C round, giving the company a valuation of $13.3 billion. The business withholds all revenue information from the general public.

    Competition in the NFT space has been heating up lately. Nifty Gateway, Rarible, and SuperRare are just a few of the marketplaces vying for a piece of the NFT pie right now. Coinbase, the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, is shortly stated to debut its NFT marketplace.

    However, still, as of February 2022, OpenSea has a market share of more than 80% and currently rules over the NFT landscape.

    How to get started with OpenSea?

    You will require a wallet like Metamask in order to participate in OpenSea or any other NFT marketplace. Consider your wallet as a device for interacting with the blockchain and as something you'll also need to buy and sell things on OpenSea.

    It's now time to log in to OpenSea and unlock your wallet. On your OpenSea account page, you may then view any owned assets. Just be sure to have sufficient ETH on hand to cover the cost of your items and gas.

    Note: ETH is the default currency on OpenSea and is used to pay for gas fees.

    The main hub of OpenSea for shopping is the "Browse" page. You can type the item's name into the search bar if you know it. You may also narrow down your search results by "Recently Listed," "Expiring Soon," "Highest Price," "Most Viewers," and other criteria.

    How to buy and sell NFTs on OpenSea?

    You will first need to change your ETH to Wrapped ETH (wETH) before you can make any purchases. The good news is that you can convert between ETH and wETH directly on OpenSea. You can choose an NFT and submit your offer once you have your wETH. From this point, OpenSea will manage the transaction and transfer the money and NFTs.

    On NFT marketplaces, the majority of buyers and sellers deal with single goods. However, sellers may group up to 30 goods together in a listing, called bundles. Due to gas restrictions, Ethereum blocks, trust reduction, and single transactions, the cap is set at 30 items. Bundles are a well-liked method for retailers to increase profits, and these kinds of sales have been growing steadily.

    Read more about how to buy and sell NFTs on OpenSea

    Conclusion

    OpenSea, the top NFT marketplace, is anticipating expanding alongside NFTs' future. In interviews, Finzer has stated that OpenSea will keep growing its NFT categories and branching out beyond the Ethereum network. Additionally, the metaverse, gaming, and virtual worlds are all exciting areas that will probably continue to expand alongside the NFT market.

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