If you’ve bought NFTs before, chances are that you have used or at least heard of Opensea. Earlier this year, the 4 year old company announced their Series C raise of $300 million, valuing the company at $13.3 billion. 🤯 Why the sky high valuation? Let’s look at the transaction volume.
The above chart provides an overview of how much volume Opensea has facilitated, with over $2 billion every month since August 2021, and peaking at right under $5 billion in January 2022.
How would I describe Opensea? eBay for NFTs. You can buy and sell your NFTs, with Opensea taking a flat 2.5% of all sales. Way friendlier than eBay’s confusing fee structure.
Wtf is this?
Yuck. BTW, the screenshot doesn’t include all categories because it’s way too long. But wait…what’s this?!
Interesting…I wonder what eBay is doing with NFTs. Oh, they just announced their genesis collection in partnership with OneOf and Wayne Gretzky. Guess traditional marketplace platforms are jumping on the NFT bandwagon.
Anyway, I’m not here to do a dive on Opensea, but rather share thoughts about an announcement they shared last Friday: the Seaport Protocol.
What gives?
“The core smart contract is open source and inherently decentralized, with no contract owner, upgradeability, or other special privileges.” WOAH. A $13 billion venture-backed company creating an open-source tool for the whole space to utilize, build upon, and hopefully win together? Not common. Can you imagine if Nike open-sourced their Air Max technology in the 1980’s to push the athletic shoe space forward? No way in hell that would have happened.
Buy or trade: Currently, marketplaces only allow for buying, selling, auctioning, and bidding for a specific cryptocurrency or equivalent token (ETH, SOL, APE, USDC, etc.). The Seaport protocol now allows for a hybrid purchase/trade component. For example, if a buyer wants my Cool Cat, they could could offer me another Cool Cat and 1 ETH (~$2k).
Not for sale! But let’s chat offline 😏
Trade for specific NFTs and traits: Have a rare NFT that’s hard to sell at a high price point? Consider trading it for another rare NFT or a mix of NFTs and crypto.
This rare gold fur Bored Ape is priced at $2.4 million. How about trade it for 10 floor Bored Apes (currently valued at ~950 ETH) and 200 ETH?
Security: There are a few different reputable trading platforms like Sudoswap, however trading is not commonplace. It is also a common vector for scamming. Using a protocol like Seaport allows for more security and a quicker way for incumbent trusted NFT marketplaces to bolt on trading functionality.
This protocol is the equivalent of a standard, allowing for interoperability between platforms. Whether you want to buy, sell, or trade NFTs on Opensea, eBay, or somewhere else, adopting the Seaport protocol makes transacting easier for all players in the ecosystem.
And what does this do? More innovation and adoption for NFTs :)
I’m excited to see this protocol roll out in the coming weeks/months. Innovation incoming!
Not sure why the fashion industry and NFTs interests me so much. Maybe I’m just a wannabe fashionista or hypebeast.
Anyway, Balenciaga announces that they will be accepting cryptocurrencies at their NYC and Beverly Hills locations, as well as online. This headline reminded me of my bit on Gucci a few weeks ago.
Digging a layer deeper, Balenciaga is owned by a French luxury group, Kering. What brands does Kering own? Yves Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, and…you guessed it. Gucci.
As a Growth guy, I love this because they’re effectively A/B testing payment methods and their consumer personas. Is crypto a viable payment method? Will that unlock another customer base?
And if we’re talking about French luxury groups, we can’t forget LVMH. One of their brands, Tag Heuer announced that they will be accepting crypto payments as well. They’ve been making a lot of moves on the NFT front as well.
Lastly, I stumbled across a fashion law website, and was intrigued at the top headlines.
3 out of the 4 articles above the fold about NFTs? 🤔🤔🤔
See you tomorrow folks :)
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