OpenSea launched in 2017 to provide a platform for trading the then-popular CryptoKitties non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
CryptoKitties became popular as they provided a new use case for blockchain, allowing users to breed rare digital cats. It was the first-of-a-kind virtual gaming application running on the Ethereum blockchain.
Over the last couple of years, OpenSea has expanded its offerings to include other digital assets such as art, sports, photography, domain names, virtual land, collectibles, and trading cards.
As the title alludes, OpenSea is indeed an open platform to anyone and anything that can be sold as a non-fungible digital asset.
This guide takes a deep dive into the OpenSea platform, describing it in detail, including where it is located, who owns or controls it, how it makes money, and some of its noteworthy competitors in the NFT market.
Read on to learn more about one of the leading NFT marketplaces.
Is OpenSea worldwide?
OpenSea is a decentralized peer-to-peer open NFT marketplace allowing anyone with a compatible cryptocurrency wallet to create, buy and sell non-fungible assets.
Given that crypto wallets are also decentralized and available to anyone across the world, it, therefore, goes to show that OpenSea is available worldwide.
To access OpenSea, anyone can load the official website and start browsing through the items on offer. If they connect their wallets to the website, they can create a custom profile and browse through assets stored in their wallets.
The open nature of the OpenSea marketplace is advantageous as it allows anyone, even people living in highly regulated or closed economies, to interact with other peers across the world.
China is a notoriously restrictive economy with a government that is highly critical of blockchain and crypto-related activities.
However, despite such restrictions to engaging in the cryptocurrency space, most Chinese residents can have crypto wallets to store non-fungible tokens. If they can have crypto wallets, they can interact with OpenSea.
Another factor that makes OpenSea truly worldwide is the broad support for various NFT assets.
So far, the platform’s users can buy, sell and trade a variety of tokens, including decentralized domain names (such as those hosted on the Zilliqa and Ethereum-based Unstoppable Domains platform), gaming items, digital art, entertainment-related tokens for videos or audio files, collectibles, sports & e-sports items, virtual real estate and trading cards.
Few other platforms offer a similar exhaustive list of assets at users’ disposal worldwide.
Where is OpenSea located?
OpenSea is a decentralized peer-to-peer online NFT marketplace that was launched in 2017. Its headquarters are based in the great state of New York within New York City. Currently, the company employs over seventy employees.
What is OpenSea?
OpenSea is a digital platform available to anyone worldwide on which non-fungible tokens are created, bought, and sold.
NFTs are blockchain records representing unique digital or physical items. These records help store information about the items, such as description, provenance, and ownership.
At OpenSea, users can interact with various assets, including collectibles, virtual parcels of land, gaming merchandise, trading cards, and entertainment audio/video files.
What is the biggest NFT platform?
The biggest non-fungible token trading platform is the New York-based OpenSea, the first peer-to-peer digital marketplace for crypto-collectibles such as digital art, tokenized tickets, virtual land, and decentralized domain names.
OpenSea facilitates well over $50 million in daily trading volume as of December 2021, but at its peak between August and October of the same year, the platform saw NFT trading volume spike to a high of over $300 million a day.
So far, the platform has reported over $10 Billion in sales since its launch, most of which was witnessed in 2021.
OpenSea also boasts the highest user count of any NFT platform at over 1.8 million during the peak months, but that number has fallen to about 600,000 monthly users by the end of 2021.
Data from DappRadar shows that OpenSea saw nearly 1.3 million transactions done on the platform from over 282,000 users within the previous 30-day period to December 20th. The platform registered a total transaction value of more than $2 Billion in the same period.
What are alternatives to OpenSea?
OpenSea has two main rivals in the NFT marketplace: Binance and Coinbase. Binance launched the feature-limited NFT Marketplace in June 2021, right in the middle of the NFT hype.
The Binance NFT platform only supported NFT creation by pre-approved artists and institutions when it launched. It did not allow other users to mint NFTs, deposit, or withdraw the same.
Binance’s NFT Marketplace has since expanded its offerings to support dual blockchains, i.e., Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain (BSC), meaning that NFTs minted on either network can be traded on the platform.
Additionally, Binance enabled deposit and withdrawal features for NFT assets to and from the platform. Token creation is still, however, limited to pre-approved digital artists.
Binance has several benefits over OpenSea, including that it enables NFT users to plug into the broader Binance ecosystem that includes an exchange, mining or staking pools, lending, investment, and learning resources using the standard log-in credentials.
Coinbase, a leading crypto exchange based in the United States, is also planning to launch an NFT marketplace, and so far, since it announced its plans and opened up the waiting list, more than 2 million people have hopped on board.
That is a lot of interest and could potentially erode the dominance of OpenSea once it launches.
Other noteworthy OpenSea alternatives include Rarible, Gemini-affiliated Nifty Gateway, Zora, Mintable, and SuperRare.
Is it free to sell NFT on OpenSea?
No, it is not free to sell your digital art on OpenSea. Currently, the platform charges a commission fee of 2.5% for every transaction it processes. This is in addition to royalty fees that some NFT creators demand from subsequent secondary sales of their work.
Compared to several other premia and more exclusive NFT marketplaces with commission fees as high as 20%, OpenSea is very competitive.
Who owns OpenSea io?
OpenSea NFT marketplace was co-founded in 2017 by Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah, the former acting as its CEO and the latter as a CTO.
Since its launch, the platform has attracted the interest of several high-profile investors who have poured millions of dollars into its development.
These noteworthy investors include a16z, Coinbase, YCombinator, Blockchain Capital, Mark Cuban, Tim Ferriss, Naval Ravikant, and Balaji Srinivasan, among others.
How does OpenSea make money?
OpenSea, like most other NFT marketplaces, charges a transaction fee for facilitating peer-to-peer trades. Currently, that commission stands at 2.5% of the transaction value, which means that for every $100 in sales, $2.50 is deducted as a facilitation fee.
Is OpenSea Worth It? Final thoughts
OpenSea is a leading NFT marketplace for very valid reasons. The main one is that it is decentralized and available to anyone with a compatible crypto wallet. It is also reasonably intuitive to use and commission fees and competitive.
Finally, it supports multiple blockchains, including Ethereum, the platform hosting most of the non-fungible tokens currently in the market, and the leading smart contract platform.
Despite potential headwinds ahead with the launch of both Binance NFT Marketplace and the forthcoming launch of Coinbase’s NFt platform, OpenSea will still offer its users enough to keep them coming for more.
