Barely known two years ago, OpenSea is today the largest NFT marketplace in the world, with almost 2 million active users, more than 20 million assets hosted and a valuation that could be around 10 billion dollars. With a meteoric trajectory behind it, the platform aspires high: it wants to be the Amazon of buying and selling non-fungible tokens.
However, the beginnings were less spectacular. Founded in 2017 by Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah, it was not until February 2021 that the world was seduced by the allure of NFTs. Suddenly, they went from processing $1.1 million worth of transactions a month, of which only $28,000 was revenue, to multiplying their volume tenfold to $3.5 billion, of which they took $85 million in fees. Now, its founders are preparing to become the new crypto billionaires.
As for the keys to OpeanSea’s success, it could be said that they are having been at the right time and place, knowing how to listen to users and having created a platform that is independent of the category, which allows the purchase and sale of any digital item, from a work of art to a meme or a movie script.
The creation and listing of OpeanSea has been simplified to the point that this process takes less than 3 minutes. The platform allows sellers to choose between a fixed price or auction format and artists decide their resale commission. Also, all purchases are made in cryptocurrencies, mainly Ethereum.
In this short time, OpenSea has also had to deal with a scandal that ended up costing a top manager his job. Last September, Twitter users exposed the shenanigans of their product manager, Nate Chastain, who had used his position to buy NFTs before being promoted on the marketplace, and then resell them for much higher sums. .
Among the risks OpenSea now faces is its reliance on the NFT market and the proliferation of counterfeits and shady offers. As for the possible challenges, one quite relevant will be that of the competition. Attracted by the popularity of NFTs, Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, has announced the launch of its own market where you can exchange this type of asset. According to Forbes, the platform’s CEO, Brian Armstrong, estimates that the marketplace could be “as big or bigger” than its main business.
NFT fever continues
Fans of Neo, Trinity and the entire Matrix universe eagerly await the release of the new installment in the saga, which comes more than 20 years after the release of the first film. Taking into account that the story is based on the internet and virtual worlds, it seems logical that Warner has opted to promote the new film by creating NFTs from The Matrix. The strategy has been a complete success, as evidenced by the fact that the Nifty’s website went down.
Since the end of last month, fans of the saga can get one of the 100,000 non-fungible tonkens that the producer has put into circulation. Each NFT costs about $50 and represents an avatar inspired by characters from the Matrix universe.
The sale is divided into two stages. In the first, the aforementioned hyper-realistic “base” avatars can be purchased. In the second stage, which will take place on December 16, fans will be able to transform their base NFT by choosing between the blue or the red pill, just like in the movie itself. The experience does not end there: throughout the year, the avatar will face various challenges to get new updates.
On the day of the launch of the first stage, more than 300,000 Matrix fans queued to get their avatar, which caused the fall of the Nifty’s shopping website. As reported by Cointelegraph, three days later there were still 347,133 people waiting to be able to buy a Matrix NFT.
11483612
Facebook Comments
Disqus