When the face of non-funny symbols (NFTs) is OpenSea in the middle of a reinvention. The marketplace, which helped make digital collectibles a global craze, are now trying to place themselves as a web3 home where users can not only trade with NFTs, but also symbols and eventually a wider range of defi activity and other assets on chain.
Earlier this year, OpenSea announced that it would come out with a Sea token, which created a lot of expectation about what the symbol would be used for and what the platform would be. There is little known about the token, but OpenSea’s CMO Adam Hollander shared that the OpenSea Foundation would release more details in early October.
In this conversation with Coindesk, Hollander discusses how the platform is expanding beyond NFTs, the long -lasting sea token and the challenge of keeping both long -time users and the newcomers engaged in an increasingly crowded crypto market.
Coindsk: With rebrand of OpenSea, who are you trying to compete with and where is this rotation?
Adam Hollander: I would say that we pretty much want people to see OpenSea as their web3 home, which means you should easily be able to trade any act of active across any chain or wallet, extremely trouble -free and easy, regardless of your level of crypto experience.
So if you are someone who is in the trenches that shop every day, then we have a lot of very robust features for you. And if you are someone who does not have much experience with crypto, we need to build a lot of very easy to use trouble -free features to board you in crypto and make sure you can experience what it is like to trade tokens, NFTs, other types of assets on the chain.
So if you move away from the NFT market and include trade on the platform, what are some of the features you mentioned that will be available?
We are the world’s largest NFT market space. We expect that we will always be the world’s largest NFT marketplace, and we are very interested in this customer base and creators and artists, and therefore we do not move away from NFTs. We develop and expand our platform so it can be a single place where you can come and shop. Now the natural development of it has been a token trade in the last few months, which is why you can already come to OpenSea, and you can trade fungal tokens now across 22 chains extremely seamless
But we build new features literally during the day.
I would not say that our vision is limited to just symbols and NFTs, there are a number of really interesting things that people do now on chain with assets in the real world and tokenization of things in the real world, everything from Pokemon card to real estate.
And not to say that OpenSea has immediate plans in one of these specific places, but we see this as a single place that you can call your web3 home for pretty much everything you would do on-chain.
Given that NFT volume is not near the heights it once was, and given that the exchange market has become so saturated, how do you plan to follow?
Volume today for NFTs is not what it was on top, as literally Jimmy Fallon and presidents and everyone else talked about NFTs every day. That said, there were several billion dollars volume in only Q1 this year alone on NFTs. And then it’s a vibrant market.
We actually see significant upticks in this market during the year. And when it comes to token trading and Memecoins, and everything else happening on the chain, outside of NFTs, there are hundreds of billions of dollars volume happening on the market and OpenSea sees significant growth.
Since we launched our new reward program, we have seen almost 400% volume growth right on OpenSea, and it is really exciting for us because it means we have built an incredible product.
The AirDrop message came from the OpenSea Foundation 10 months ago. It’s not been released yet, so why have people been waiting for so long?
The fund releases the token. I will probably challenge the assumption that the tokens should be released quickly from the day they are advertised. There are plenty of examples of tokens that have been hinted at or even formally advertised and did not actually come out for years afterwards, and I would say that there is no right or wrong way to do this, except, of course, that everyone wants it to happen right away because everyone is very enthusiastic to be rewarded for all time and energy and loyalty,
I simply want to say to you that it is very important for the OpenSea Foundation that this is not a Memecoin to be released and forgotten. If you look at most of the coins for your example, they tend to go up in the right very quickly and then they immediately go down the right side very quickly.
And most of them we don’t really talk about anymore, and that’s because they don’t really serve a purpose. They were not released for any reason other than the company decided, let’s launch a token. And people are always excited about the possibility of getting free money that has fallen upside down, but at the end of the day, what is important to us is that the sea token should be an integral part of the OpenSea ecosystem.
We are very conscious of our creative discussions with the foundation of ways that can arise, and much of what we are trying to do is innovative, and much of what the foundation is planning, simply takes time.
We think we will release our token when the time has come to release it. It applies to what is right for Opensea, what is right for society, what is right for macrofactors. There are a number of calculations that go into it. When we release it, we believe that the market will appreciate that the foundation and the opening have been extremely thoughtful and aware of the way this token should exist as part of our ecosystem, not as a memcoin to be released and forgotten, and hopefully as something that has much more residence power than the symbols people are used to seeing Airdrobed.
There has been something scraped online from also, who may be angry with newcomers who may come on the platform and find ways to get free money, while also sitting around for years may not get their fair share.
How do you balance by bringing new users to the platform and incentive them to stay on the Post AirDrop, while also keeping your original users engaged, who may want the new people to look for ways to make quick money?
Of course, we appreciate all the historical users who have driven volume through OpenSea for the past seven to eight years, and we have a plan where we see these individuals and the fund thinks it will be able to reward them properly.
We are also like a company that needs people continuously to use the platform and utilize it today as one of their most important tools in crypto, and we also believe that we will be able to effectively reward people who participate with our platform today and participate in our various phases of rewards. And then I simply want to say that it does not serve OpenSea or the foundation good to have whole cohorts of customers, whether it is our long -term most loyal customers who are upset, nor does it serve us good to have people who use the platform actively today.
And then we have a number of plans in place that we think we will be able to do a very good job of rewarding everyone in an effective way. I can’t talk to the details of it, except from saying, you know what we’ve said in our messages that if you’ve been on OpenSea for years and you’ve been running a lot of historical volumes, we’ll see you not forgotten. And if you use the platform today and you participate in our reward programs, you will be meaningfully considered by the foundation of the TGE.
Read more: OpenSea teases the sea tea with the final phase of reward in the middle of the app launch
