OpenSea: The Reasonable Revolutionary | The Generalist

NFTs are for real. Whether cynic or supporter, the numbers show that non-fungible tokens are far from frivolous. So far this year, NFT sales have totaled more than $13 billion, with much of that sum arriving in the last two months.

Investors may want to watch out for new types of NFTs. If you’re feeling irked you missed out on CryptoPunks, Bored Apes, and Art Blocks, there may be some consolation. New formats are constantly being created; two experts suggest music and “intelligent” NFTs are worth watching.

OpenSea is extremely dominant. The exchange boasts a market share of 97%. That’s thanks, in part, to OpenSea’s superior asset breadth, easy listing process, and robust filtering system.

Mason Nystrom: OpenSea aggregated and offered a breadth of different assets. So while Rarible gained early volume when it launched because of its liquidity mining, Rarible didn’t aggregate other non-Rarible assets (i.e. Punks, Axies, art). So OpenSea became the go-to market/liquidity for many of these early assets. OpenSea also passed through royal... See more

With a permissionless approach to creation, a huge number of assets on the platform, and a strong filtering system, it looks like a business encircled by subtle but significant moats.

Running lean is vital for markets with high volatility. OpenSea maintained a small team for its first few years, with just 7 employees as of late 2020. That allowed the company to weather the crypto bear market, hanging in until NFTs took off.

Decentralization doesn’t have to be doctrinal. Much of the crypto community seems to view decentralization as both a source of legitimacy and a cure-all. While there’s clearly room for decentralized players — Uniswap being one example in the token exchange space — centralized companies can also thrive. OpenSea is the latter.

If we want to get a sense for where else the company might go, revisiting Coinbase’s roadmap might be a good call. In many respects, that seems to be OpenSea’s closest analogue — a centralized crypto exchange that serves as the natural on-ramp to the ecosystem, and is keen to play by the rules.

Maria Shen: Capturing the “buy now” mechanism is important because the more “buy now” NFTs you have the more liquid your markets [are]...Opensea has the most “buy now”.

Alex Gedevani: [OpenSea’s] emphasis on being a permissionless market for NFT minting, discovery, and trading [explains its market share accrual]. This enabled the long tail of creators to easily onboard given a low barrier to entry relative to other platforms. This approach is what scaled the supply sides of creators which attracted users and liqui... See more