OpenSea 2.0 speculation: Points? Airdrop? Non-fungible Token Launchpad?

Original author: Karen, Foresight News

On November 4th Beijing time, OpenSea released a teaser animation, in which a ship set sail with sails raised, indicating that the platform will usher in a new version release in December. At the same time, OpenSea launched the registration of a waiting list. At the time of writing, 174,000 people have joined the waiting list.

This news quickly sparked community expectations and speculations about token issuance, airdrop activities, reward mechanisms, and L2. According to Devin Finzer, the founder and CEO of OpenSea, ‘The new version of OpenSea is completely rebuilt because true innovation sometimes requires us to take a step back and rethink and design the entire framework.’ Vasa, the co-founder of OpenSea Pro, also revealed that the development of the new version of OpenSea began a year ago.

Based on OpenSea’s response and my analysis, the specific features or characteristics of the new version may include the following highlights:

1. According to the post by Azuki researcher and Mocaverse consultant wale.moca, the new version of OpenSea will feature a leaderboard with XP points inside. OpenSea officials retweeted this.

Based on this speculation, it is very likely that the new version will introduce a points program. Considering that OpenSea is a US company, the reward may not necessarily be OpenSea Token, but may also include platform profit sharing. It is worth noting that in August of this year, OpenSea received a Wells notice from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in which the SEC threatened to sue OpenSea because they believe that the Non-fungible Tokens on the OpenSea platform are securities. In response, OpenSea stated, ‘In addition to sticking to our position, we also promise to provide $5 million to help pay the legal fees of the creators and developers of Non-fungible Tokens who received the Wells notice.’

It is worth mentioning that OpenSea Pro (the non-fungible token marketplace aggregator Gem acquired by OpenSea) previously announced on its official website homepage that it would launch a reward campaign, claiming that ‘user activities are currently being scored and tracked, and the game is about to begin.’ However, this content has been removed from the official website.

In addition, to commemorate the launch of OpenSea Pro, in April last year, OpenSea Pro released the Gemesis Non-fungible Token series. As of now, the floor price of this series of Non-fungible Tokens is 0.0139 ETH, and it has pumped 242% in the past 24 hours. The cumulative volume displayed on OpenSea has reached 8180 ETH. In this series, the rarity of the Non-fungible Tokens is closely related to the time of the first transaction using Gem. The earlier the transaction, the higher the rarity. Therefore, if OpenSea conducts Airdrop activities in the future, besides the trading users of OpenSea, holders of Gemesis Non-fungible Tokens are also likely to be considered.

2. Release new features that are beneficial to artists.

3. Integrate GameFi in a more Depth way. This can be seen from OpenSea’s recent move. In late October, OpenSea integrated the Base game ecosystem B3 Chain, aiming to improve users’ Web3 game experience, support faster and cheaper minting of Non-fungible Token series and in-game items.

4. Implement account abstraction to make it easier for users and developers to access Web3.

5. According to @DefiIgnas’ wishlist, we hope OpenSea 2.0 can support BTC ranking, rune rewards, simplify onboarding, portfolio page, Token Airdrop, as well as fragmented Non-fungible Tokens, Non-fungible Token Launchpad, social functions (Instagram for Non-fungible Tokens), and native mobile application. In response to this, OpenSea CTO Nadav Hollander commented that this is a good list and asked for @DefiIgnas’ top priority.

Of course, some people speculate that OpenSea will create a pump.fun version of the Non-fungible Token market, but this may require fragmentation of Non-fungible Tokens to achieve.

In the current MEME frenzy, the revival road of the Non-fungible Token seems to be full of challenges. Especially considering the poor performance of Blur, a competitor to OpenSea, after the issuance of the token, and the upcoming issuance of tokens by Magic Eden, it remains to be seen whether OpenSea 2.0 can reignite the frenzy of Non-fungible Tokens.

It is worth mentioning that OpenSea team members @ken_cadima will hold a technical talk during Devcon (November 13) to reveal the specifics of OpenSea 2.0. Foresight News will continue to follow.