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Introduction to OpenSea

Introduction to OpenSea

What is OpenSea? #

Founded in 2017, OpenSea became the largest decentralized non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace built on Ethereum. The platform allows anyone to buy, sell and mint NFTs with more than 200 payment options. Items include art, video games, website domains, games and music. Currently, OpenSea has more than 30 million NFTs with more than 900,000 collections.

OpenSea also allows developers to directly power their marketplaces on the platform. They can gain access to OpenSea’s full suite of functionalities, from setting up auctioning methods to creating bundle sales.

Currently, OpenSea is pioneering a royalty model, where creators can choose to earn royalties each time they resell their NFTs. This concept enables creators to profit every time the item changes hands on the secondary market, and has the potential to revolutionize the payout model for creators and provide greater protection for intellectual property.

How does OpeaSea work? #

OpenSea is a non-custodial marketplace. It doesn’t store any digital assets. Instead, users store the assets in their own crypto wallets, the same place where they store private keys for cryptocurrencies. Every time the ownership of an item is changed, the ownership record is transferred from the seller to the buyer and OpenSea will charge a fee of 2.5% of this process. Besides the 2.5% operations fee, users incur gas fees during the transaction process too. These gas fees are paid to Ethereum, the underlying protocol, for maintenance of the network including setting up an account, accepting an offer and cancelling a bid.

Is OpenSea Safe? #

OpenSea is safe because it is secured with the power of blockchain. As mentioned above, it is non-custodial which your NFTs never leave your wallet until they are sold. When a sale occurs, the smart contract you agreed to when listing your NFT activates and withdraws it from your wallet, in exchange for which you can deposit the amount owed. Everything is protected and verifiable by the blockchain.

Advantages of OpenSea #

OpenSea provides a few advantages. Firstly, being the largest NFT marketplace means there are more people to see your work or what you are trying to sell. With the mobile app for iOS, the visibility of your listings is higher.

Second, the Collection Manager of OpenSea allows you to both mint and sell NFTs with zero gas fees. This means you can get higher profits for your sales, and it will draw in more users to the platform as it costs them nothing to create on OpenSea.

Finally, OpenSea fees are low. OpenSea provides the NFT marketplace infrastructure for free and users cover the platform’s upkeep with a 2.5% fee on every NFT sale. Regardless of whether your NFT sells for $10 or $1,000,000, the fee paid to OpenSea is the same.

Disadvantages of OpenSea #

Unfortunately, OpenSea only allows royalties of up to 10% for artists, though this might not really a disadvantage as it means secondary sellers can keep more profit for themselves.

What wallets does OpenSea accept? #

There are tons of wallets that you can use with OpenSea, though they all share the commonality that they are Ethereum network compatible. Below is some of the wallets you can use with OpenSea:

  • Metamask
  • Coinbase Wallet
  • TrustWallet
  • Portis
  • Fortmatic/Magic
  • Arkane
  • Authereum
  • Bitski
  • Dapper
  • Kaikas
  • OperaTouch
  • Torus
  • WalletLink
  • WalletConnect 

Conclusion #

OpenSea remains one of the biggest decentralised NFT marketplaces. It is worth using for anyone who wants to buy or sell NFTs. But please be careful and make sure you know what you are doing and double check your transactions to avoid being scammed.

Updated on December 9, 2021
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*Paid Advertisement. Not financial advice. RugDoc is not responsible for the projects showcased here. DYOR and ape safu.

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