If any of you were wondering what the cross-chain migration looked like, Michael Stelzner (host of the Web3 Business podcast) shared with me a recording of his experience.
Overall, pretty smooth! I expect cross-chain experiences will be more seamless and a process that runs in the background over time.
Just as I thought I was going to start today’s piece with the topics laid out, the NFT space got hit by an announcement from OpenSea.
What was all the hubbub about? OpenSea announced the public launch of OpenSea Pro.
Before we get into the details of the announcement, what’s the context that led us to today’s announcement?
January 2022: Blur starts development of their marketplace product. The date is inferred from this Twitter Spaces last weekend, where Pacman (CEO of Blur) mentions that the team has worked on Blur for ‘440 days’.
April 2022: Opensea announced the acquisition of Gem in April 2022.
Gem is a NFT marketplace aggregator that allows users to purchase NFTs from different platforms. For example, if I wanted to purchase a rare Pokemon Card at the best price, I could go to EBay, Facebook Marketplace, or my local hobby store. A tool like Gem aggregates all the listings for a simpler and more efficient purchasing experience.
Now that I’m working through timelines, it’s possible that Opensea heard rumblings about Blur and knew that they had to respond to the eventual competitor that they would become.
The title of the blog post suggests this:
Although the ‘pro’ user persona and segment has persisted in other products (eg: Coinbase Pro), I believe this is a relatively new term for the NFT marketplace space and has been more recently proliferated by Blur with their explicit focus on ‘pro’ users.
October 2022: Blur launches publicly and incorporates a brilliant multi-phased airdrop strategy.
February 2023: On Valentine’s Day, the BLUR token launched, reinvigorating the NFT ecosystem with fresh liquidity. Blur users were rewarded with airdrops as the balance of power between marketplaces shifted significantly in upstart’s favor.
Blur’s marketshare has gradually decreased over time, but still remains as the dominant player as users anticipate ‘Season 2’ of BLUR rewards.
So what does OpenSea do? It’s not so much about what they do, but what they did, what they’re doing, and what they will do. And that’s the fun part 😉
April 2023: OpenSea announces the public launch of OpenSea Pro, shared above. OpenSea Pro also shared an announcement of their own.
What’s the TLDR of both announcements?
OpenSea identified ‘power’ users early on and identified their needs as a specific user persona. As a result, they acquired Gem.
OpenSea had a limited time 0% marketplace fee in response to Blur’s rising popularity. That fee is returning to the standard 2.5% fee.
Instead, OpenSea Pro will have a limited time 0% fee.
The marketplace is introducing their own form of community rewards, in the form of NFTs.
Gem users before 3/31/23 are eligible to claim the Gemesis NFT.
Before I continue, I want be clear that I am making educated guesses at what OpenSea may do as they roll out their Pro platform. Who knows what will happen 🤷♂️
On the surface level this mint looks like your run of the mill open edition mint. There is a 180k supply, which is massive by any standard.
Upon closer inspection, there are several differences between this vs. a standard open-edition mint:
If this was a true open-edition, why would these be ERC-721 tokens, which are more dynamic than 1155’s?
The FAQ page provides some insight to this, kudos to the MVHQ community which I’m a part of, for pointing this out.
Great, there’s a ‘rank’ trait based corresponding to the date the user first used Gem. Earlier user = lower rank.
Is that it for Gemesis? I don’t think so.
Do you know what Pokemon is? If so, share or subscribe!
On one camp we have the ‘it’s another worthless NFT’. These are currently selling for ~$50.
Opensea just rebranded to Blur and rewarded all early users with $40!!!
MenaceToSociety 🥶 @NFTsAreNice
However, zooming out, what might Gemesis and community rewards look like?
The best comparable that comes to mind is credit card reward programs.
As a Chase Sapphire Reserve card holder, I get a multitude of benefits:
$300 annual travel credit
3x points per dollar spent on travel and dining purchases
Points that can be redeemed with an added value bonus (eg: 50% value bonus when redeeming for travel)
$15 monthly credit to Instacart with complimentary Instacart+ membership
$5 monthly credit to DoorDash with complimentary DashPass membership
$10 monthly credit to Gopuff
The list goes on, making the $550 annual fee worthwhile if the card is used appropriately. Chase also has different tiers for its credit card suite, with each providing a similar range of benefits but at varying rates.
Based off the credit card rewards model, the OpenSea community rewards + Gemesis NFT model could look like this:
I’m oversimplifying the above as there can be layers added to each category. For example, if certain NFTs are deemed more popular, there could be redemption tiers.
Why might Opensea take this approach?
This is an alternative to the tokenization approach that Blur and many other products and protocols have employed. Tokenization is very difficult to employ if not planned for on Day 1. On top of that, there are legal considerations and risks for a company of Opensea’s size if they were to move in that direction.
No need to worry about governance. Opensea is a centralized organization (they do have decentralized and open-source protocols though) and I imagine they plan to keep it that way.
The community rewards initiative can be interoperable across OpenSea (retail audience) and OpenSea Pro (pro audience).
Conceptually, community rewards is easier to understand. No tokens, governance, voting, delegation, etc. Buy on OpenSea —> Earn points —> Redeem for rewards. It’s as simple as that.
OpenSea has more control over the program. They can adjust benefits, add incentives, and introduce new rewards partners over time, just like a traditional credit card rewards program.
OpenSea can’t be Blur, and I don’t think they intend to be.
I’m excited to see what this next chapter of marketplace competition will bring in terms of creativity, innovation, and aligned incentives. The multi-dimensional battle for acquiring consumers, creators, and developers is just beginning.
Dune is a great community-contributed, open-source analytics platform for the web3 ecosystem. Looking for statistics about DeFi, NFTs, or cross-chain activity? Chances are you’ll find a dashboard on Dune.
Dune’s latest newsletter digest highlighted interesting statistics related to today’s topic: Blur vs. OpenSea.
The featured dashboard by Sealaunch compared the users of the respective marketplaces and their DEX (decentralized exchange) usage.
TLDR? Blur users are more likely to be high-volume DEX traders. Makes sense.
Secondly, Dune is incorporating AI and LLM’s (large language models) into their roadmap!
What does this do?
Queries will be explained in plain English
Natural Language Querying will be coming soon
These updates will be huge for non-technical people like myself. I look forward to playing around with these features when they’re released and flex a muscle I’ve been lacking 💪
See you Thursday!
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