Three months after OpenSea enabled support for Solana, the non-fungible token marketplace is kicking off its Solana launchpad to allow users to mint new projects from scratch.
According to an official blog post, OpenSea is looking forward to a “multi-chain future” with the introduction of the Solana launchpad. The platform will reportedly guide users throughout the process of pre-mint activity, allowlist minting for early supporters, and post-mint and secondary sales:
Well this is interesting 👀
— Youness KASMI ($c1f3) (@kasmiyouness1) July 18, 2022
Multi-Chain Future for OpenSea Users
Most members of the OpenSea community were excited to see the integration of Solana into the marketplace, considering NFTs on the Solana ecosystem are popular and have generated considerable sales volumes in the past few months.
We believe in a multi-chain future where people on OpenSea have access to NFTs across a vast number of blockchains. In the last year, Solana has emerged among the top blockchains for NFTs, and we share their vision of a scalable and inclusive NFT ecosystem.
OpenSea blog post
On April 29, Solana-based NFT collection Okay Bears generated over US$18 million in trading volume, flipping Any Rivals volume on its first day.
There are already a handful of Sol-based NFT projects on OpenSea’s launchpad available for minting, including Zoonies and Monkai NFTs:
Leading NFT marketplace OpenSea has laid off approximately 20 percent of its workforce due to a confluence of factors, including the harsh crypto bear market and instability in the broader economy:
Today is a hard day for OpenSea, as we’re letting go of ~20% of our team. Here’s the note I shared with our team earlier this morning: pic.twitter.com/E5k6gIegH7
— Devin Finzer (dfinzer.eth) (@dfinzer) July 14, 2022
The layoffs at Open Sea follow a swathe of job losses throughout crypto in 2022 – in June, Coinbase slashed 1,100 jobs representing around 18 percent of its workforce, and BlockFi and Crypto.com have shed a combined total of more than 400 staff.
OpenSea Readies for Prolonged Downturn
OpenSea co-founder and CEO Devin Finzer took to Twitter on July 15 to share the message he sent to staff regarding the job losses in which he explained the NFT marketplace was preparing to endure a potentially “prolonged downturn”:
We need to prepare the company for the possibility of a prolonged downturn. The changes we’re making today put us in a position to maintain multiple years of runway under various crypto winter scenarios (five years at current volume), and give us high confidence that we will only have to go through this process once.
Devin Finzer, co-founder and CEO, OpenSea
Opportunities Emerge From Bear Market
According to data from CoinGecko, since its peak in November last year the total cryptocurrency market cap has fallen by around 70 percent, from just under US$3 trillion to below US$1 trillion.
This collapse in value has imperilled projects across all sectors of the crypto economy, including exchanges, lending platforms, DeFi apps and NFT marketplaces. The fact that OpenSea, the oldest and largest NFT marketplace, is now being hit is a measure of the depth and severity of the current crypto winter.
As hard as these conditions are for many projects and investors, Finzer says they can create opportunities to innovate, stating:
We have a huge opportunity in front of us. During this winter, I expect that we’ll see an explosion in innovation and utility across NFTs. With the hard (but important) changes we made today, we’re in an even better position to capture what will soon become the largest market on the planet. When the global economy is uncertain, our mission to build the foundation for new, peer-to-peer economies feels more urgent and important than ever.
In response to a rash of recent stolen and plagiarised NFTs implicating its platform, OpenSea has announced the launch of a new feature that will automatically hide suspicious NFT transfers from view on its marketplace.
Fresh Investments in Safety Measures
Just last month, OpenSea suffered a security breach on its main Discord channel that allowed hackers to promote a fake YouTube partnership with the NFT platform. As a result, OpenSea has announced investments in theft prevention, IP infringement, scaling review and moderation. It also intends to reduce critical response times in high-touch settings, as foreshadowed by the project’s co-founder and CEO, Devin Finzer:
Like receiving an unwanted email, it's possible to receive NFT transfers from people you don’t know.
Recently, we've seen scammers use these transfers to entice people to click links to malicious 3rd party sites.
— Devin Finzer (dfinzer.eth) (@dfinzer) June 13, 2022
Self-Detection Technologies to Combat Fraud
OpenSea will use “critical auto-detection” technologies for copyright breaches and other instances of fraud. According to Finzer, removing such elements from the platform will improve its overall performance and will also prevent unsolicited advertisements and potential frauds on open blockchains being seen on OpenSea.
As the NFT boom broke out last year, business at OpenSea increased accordingly until frequent hacks and frauds left many investors dissatisfied with the platform’s efforts to compensate victims and combat theft. Last month, OpenSea rolled out measures to reduce fraud while improving authenticity.
This latest round of safety measures arrives just as demand for NFTs is dropping off and the cryptocurrency market in general is in a downward spiral, though they will be nonetheless welcome.
OpenSea has announced the launch of a new marketplace protocol dubbed ‘Seaport’ that will allow its users to barter for NFTs, adding additional payment methods beyond just paying for the tokens with cryptocurrencies:
Introducing Seaport, a brand new web3 marketplace protocol for safely and efficiently buying and selling NFTs.
With an emphasis on flexibility and optimizations, Seaport has been built to support new and evolving use-cases for where NFTs are heading.https://t.co/3lUQIQm0km
‘Seaport’ allows users to acquire NFTs in a range of new ways. For example, they can bundle different assets in exchange for NFTs, extending payment methods beyond just crypto:
Seaport is a web3 marketplace protocol for buying and selling NFTs, and is not just for OpenSea. This is an open source smart contract which allows customized NFT markets. This seems very consequential to the NFT ecosystem! https://t.co/bBiZvy3iDu
SudoSwap already allows users to barter for NFTs, but this feature is now becoming native to OpenSea. According to the platform, a user “can agree to supply a number of ETH/ERC20/ERC721/ERC1155 items” in exchange for NFTs.
Tipping Support Also Offered Via Seaport
Adding to its new features, Seaport users can now also specify which criteria, such as certain traits on NFT artwork, or pieces of a collection they want when making offers. OpenSea will also support tipping if the amount does not exceed that of the original offer made:
Opensea announced something MAJOR today – they created a protocol for NFT marketplaces called Seaport
Here's what it means, why it's big for decentralization and how this radically changes how we buy/sell/trade NFTs
The NFT marketplace stated that “OpenSea does not control or operate Seaport protocol – we will just be one, among many, building on top of this shared protocol”.
As adoption grows and developers create new evolving use-cases, we are all responsible for keeping each other safe.
OpenSea blog post
OpenSea Rolls Out Wave of New Features
OpenSea continues to evolve and improve its users’ experience. Last month a leak was made public that reveals users will soon be able to trade NFTs on OpenSea using credit cards. Most recently, in an attempt to prevent fraud and plagiarism that hinders the NFT space, OpenSea announced it would be putting measures in place to reduce fraud while improving authenticity.
In a series of blog posts, OpenSea revealed it would be making two changes to the platform: an updated verification and collection badging system, and an automated system to aid in identifying, removing, and preventing instances of “copymints”.
The High Court of Justice in the UK has ruled to recognise NFTs as private property. The ruling has been hailed as a “landmark” but in reality will not actually change much, apart from helping to combat fraud. NFTs are already treated as private property in the US:
1/ My latest story in @artnet is about NFTs reportedly being ruled as "property" in the UK. I spoke with several lawyers in the US to get their feedback. https://t.co/6dHBnPub44
The catch in the ruling is that this conferred private property status does not extend to the underlying content an NFT represents.
OpenSea Caught Up in Case
The court case came about when Lavinia Osbourne, founder of Women in Blockchain Talks, claimed that two Boss Beauties NFTs had been stolen from her MetaMask wallet earlier this year. The NFTs ended up in two anonymous accounts on OpenSea and in an effort to reclaim the stolen property, Osbourne filed an injunction against the NFT marketplace.
A judge overseeing the case ruled that the NFTs were technically property and thereby enabled the court to issue an order requiring OpenSea to freeze the accounts so the NFTs could not be traded or sold.
Since no one knew the identities of the wallet holders, the injunction was granted against “persons unknown”. In a comment regarding the decision, Stevenson Law firm described the ruling as “a draconian remedy”.
Osbourne commented following the ruling:
Women in Blockchain Talks was founded to open up the opportunities blockchain offers to anyone, regardless of age, gender, nationality or background. This case will hopefully be instrumental in making the blockchain space a safer one, encouraging more people to interact with exciting and meaningful assets like NFTs.
Lavinia Osbourne, founder, Women in Blockchain Talks
UK authorities have been cracking down on the fraudulent use of NFTs, with the country’s first NFT seizure worth US$1.9 million earlier this year having been part of an investigation into an elaborate tax evasion scheme.
As the NFT garden continues to blossom, issues such as fraud and plagiarism are inevitably hindering trust in the space. To address this, OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace, is putting measures in place to reduce fraud while improving authenticity:
2 – Reducing copymints: we’re rolling out an automated system to proactively identify, remove, and prevent copymints.
An updated verification and collection badging system will broaden the number of creators eligible for verification.
An automated system to aid in identifying, removing and preventing instances of “copymints” – copies of authentic NFT content – will also be put in place.
OpenSea says it will be implementing a new two-part detection system as copies make it more difficult to find authentic content on the platform. It will also use image recognition technology to scan NFTs on the platform and compare them with authentic collections, looking for flips, rotations and other variants.
Well, aside of the bad news regarding the #Cryptocrash , this for the #NFTs space is f*ing amazing!
According to one of its blog posts, OpenSea is “committed to threading the needle between removing copymints and giving space for those substantively additive remixes to prosper”. The marketplace has already started removing offending content and will scale up the removal process in coming weeks.
OpenSea in Troubled Waters
The changes OpenSea aims to implement come at a good time, as the marketplace has suffered various blows to its reputation in 2022. Earlier in the year, a former Bored Ape Yacht Club owner announced he would be suing OpenSea for US$1 million in damages after his Bored Ape was stolen from his crypto wallet. Mintable, another NFT marketplace, also recovered three NFTs stolen in a phishing attack on the OpenSea platform.
OpenSea has suffered a security breach on its main Discord channel, allowing hackers to promote a fake YouTube partnership with the NFT platform. OpenSea Support warned the community not to click on any links in its Discord channel, and that it would investigate the situation:
Do not click links in our Discord.
We are continuing to investigate this situation and will share information as we have it. https://t.co/jgtHcXifer
The scam was first pointed out by a Twitter user called Serpent, who shared a screenshot of the marketplace’s hacked Discord, showing the scammers promoting an NFT mint pass as part of a fake partnership with YouTube and a link to a phishing site:
Apparently, the hacker(s) used webhooks – a technique used to augment or alter the behaviour of a web page in real-time – to access server controls.
The hacker(s) was able to stay on the server for a considerable amount of time before OpenSea staff were able to regain control. It appears that at least 13 wallets had fallen victim to the scam, as per on-chain data on Etherscan.
Another Discord Channel Hacked
Compromised Discord servers aren’t that uncommon, and more users are demanding better security protocols from the messaging platform.
It seems NFT channels are the biggest target for scammers. A month ago, Crypto News Australiareported how $APE dropped over 20 percent after the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) Discord channel got hacked.
Five months ago, blockchain gaming company Animoca had to repay users 265 ETH, or US$1.1 million, after several victims fell for fake NFTs, draining a considerable amount of money out of investors’ pockets.
The NFT marketplace is now in beta after Coinbase unveiled its plans in October last year for a “Web3 social marketplace”. It is being built on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain and reportedly “any NFT that’s for sale on the Ethereum blockchain will be searchable” on its platform.
Users who are interested in the beta and want to have a look at their collections can do it here. At launch, the exchange will allow its 43 million users to easily access NFTs through the platform. The marketplace will also be adding support for other blockchains in the near future.
Coinbase NFT marketplace beta. Source: Coinbase
For a limited time, the platform will incur zero transaction costs, except for Ethereum gas fees to process a transaction on the blockchain. The platform will also require users to use a self-custody wallet such as Metamask or the Coinbase wallet.
Social Platform to Build Engagement
The platform’s beta testers who join through the waitlist are encouraged to make use of all functions, including new social features. Having received over 8 million applications, the platform may well be in a position to compete with market leader OpenSea. This could be done by not only being an NFT marketplace, but also a platform where creators can build and engage with their communities.
According to the Coinbase announcement:
We learned that people don’t just want better tools to buy and sell NFTs – they want better ways to discover them, better ways to find the right communities, and better spaces in which they can feel connected with each other.
Sanchan Saxena, VP of product, ecosystem products, Coinbase
To create more of a community feel, the platform will add social feeds to facilitate browsing of other creators’ portfolios. In an Instagram-like approach, users will have profiles tied to their wallets so users can interact with each other. The marketplace will also incorporate a recommender based on buying history, who the user follows, and other metrics.
We’d like to make Coinbase NFT a little bit more like Instagram, as opposed to, say, an auction like eBay or something like that […] I think having people that you can follow, your favourite artists or creators, and having a feed of content that gets populated from those people you follow, could be really powerful.
Brian Armstrong, Coinbase CEO
NFT Marketplace to Become Decentralised in the Future
At this stage, the platform will operate on Coinbase’s centralised servers, but in time it will be moved to decentralised solutions. In that event, the platform will include functions such as airdrops, minting, and token-gated communities. The platform will also be used to host drops by some of its many launch partners.
Royalties play a very important part in keeping the creator economy alive and are therefore one of the major focus points of the new marketplace:
NFT Community – today, we announced the beta launch of CB NFT. We also want to highlight how we plan on supporting royalties for the #creators.
Forbes’ crypto billionaires list has grown by seven this year, increasing to 19 members, though these new additions have not knocked Binance founder and CEO Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao off the top spot.
Forbes releases its crypto billionaires list this week.
The Forbes list expanded by 58 percent this year. When it was first compiled in 2018, the bar to qualify was set at US$350 million. However, as the industry has since expanded exponentially, only billionaires qualify in 2022.
Binance founder and CEO ‘CZ’ Zhao is holding tight to his top position on the list for another year. Despite Forbes downgrading CZ’s wealth estimate from US$96 billion to $65 billion, he is still several lengths out in front:
Binance’s Changpeng Zhao went from zero to $65 billion in under five years, leaving Michael Dell, Charles Koch and 2,645 other world billionaires in the dust. #ForbesBillionaireshttps://t.co/fDdi3aCmpP
In second place is FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, with a current estimated worth of US$24 billion. Bankman-Fried has grand intentions to donate much of his wealth to charities, keeping only 1 percent of his annual earnings each year, stating “I don’t want a yacht”. Brian Armstrong, CEO and founder of CoinBase, took third place with a net worth of US$6.6 billion.
Among the handful of newcomers are FTX’s co-founder Gary Wang, OpenSea co-founders Alex Atallah and Devin Finzer, Song Chi-Hyung (founder of Upbit), Kim Hyoung-nyon (Upbit’s EVP), and Nikil Viswanathan and Joseph Lau, co-founders of Alchemy.
Crypto Billionaires Line Their Pockets
For a select few, crypto investments have paid off immensely. Aussie billionaire Alex Waislitz bought crypto investments that reportedly increased in value by 400 percent. Nicknamed “Australia’s Warren Buffett”, Waislitz invested through a pre-IPO (initial public offering), which turned out to be a very smart move.
Billionaire PayPal founder Peter Thiel, on the other hand, has stated that he is disappointed he didn’t invest more before the boom.
Popular NFT marketplace OpenSea has launched direct payments on its platform via MoonPay, thereby simplifying the process of acquiring NFTs for those who don’t own cryptocurrencies.
According to OpenSea, collectors will be able to pay directly via Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Apple Pay and Google Pay, among others:
This move, which will undoubtedly bring newcomers to the NFT space, is the result of a partnership with MoonPay, a fintech player that builds payment infrastructure in the crypto space. As it stands, OpenSea users are required to leverage crypto assets such as ether to purchase NFTs on the marketplace:
OpenSea’s new feature gonna allow ppl to buy NFTs with credit cards?! Huge news if this is the case
The MoonPay integration will change this going forward, and OpenSea visitors will have the ability to choose from an assortment of payment options. MoonPay is also the company that has worked with many celebrities to facilitate Bored Ape NFT purchases for the likes of rapper Wiz Khalifa and ageing pop star Madonna.
Many are excited by OpenSea’s new venture, but some are not altogether convinced it will succeed:
This was a problem for NFT projects with CC purchases in 2019, can’t imagine what it will be like now. Unless they plan on providing a custodial wallet they can control withdrawals from, this could be ugly.
Just recently, OpenSea announced it would be supporting the blockchain network Solana (SOL), after a myriad of rumours, speculation and leaked images had hinted the platform would soon add SOL and Phantom Wallet support. OpenSea is the leading NFT project in terms of sales volume, accruing US$23.5 billion since its inception. It is followed by fellow NFT marketplace LooksRare, which has recorded US$18.16 billion in total sales volume.
