On Tuesday, leading non-fungible token marketplace OpenSea announced the launch of “OpenSea Pro,” an NFT platform geared towards power traders. According to a blog post from the company, OpenSea Pro will aggregate listings from 170+ marketplaces and include several special features not found on the regular OpenSea site. They include:
- More control over purchases and a better buying experience
- A one-stop-shop to buy, sell, and manage NFTs across all marketplaces
- Optimized gas fees, which will lower transaction costs for traders
- A watchlist, live mints overview, and batch transfer ability
For a limited time, OpenSea Pro will have no marketplace fees, a move that the company likely hopes will spur adoption and trading. The marketplace fee on the flagship OpenSea market will return to 2.5%. The company had initially dropped it to 0% to compete with Blur, an NFT marketplace for pro traders that has gobbled up market share in recent months.
OpenSea Pro is a rebranding of Gem, the NFT aggregator the company acquired in April of 2022. According to OpenSea’s blog post, its Pro version has been in the works for months as the Gem team has worked “tirelessly” to build out and refine its platform to create a “Gem V2.”
OpenSea wrote that “moving forward,” its platforms will “reflect the needs” of different user segments in its user interfaces, features, and fee structures. As OpenSea Pro will serve power traders, the regular OpenSea platform will be more fit for the mainstream user. In the future, it will have enhanced NFT discovery, simpler onboarding, and more mainstream payment options.
NFT Marketplace Wars Continue in 2023
The announcement of OpenSea Pro comes as the company faces pressure from other marketplaces that are challenging it for the top spot. The most notable is Blur, which launched in October of 2022 and has accounted for the most trading volume in the NFT space for the past couple of months.
According to Dune, a crypto analytics site, Blur accounted for $230 million in trading volume over the past week, good for 71.6% of all volume in the NFT space. To contrast, trading volume on OpenSea during the same time frame amounted to just $67 million or 21% of trading volume in the entire space.
OpenSea Pro should pose a challenge to Blur, as both platforms cater to the pro NFT trader. There is a critical difference, however: Most of the trading volume on Blur seems linked to its airdropped token, which users can earn by trading on the platform. As such, traders are “farming” the token and may even be wash trading to a significant degree.
OpenSea Pro, at least as of now, does not have a token to farm. Instead, it will be relying solely on the platform’s offerings to entice pro traders to switch over.
OpenSea Launches ‘Gemesis’ NFT Collection
To mark the launch of its Pro version, OpenSea dropped an NFT collection to thank early users of Gem. The collection, called “Gemesis,” consists of 180,000 non-fungible tokens that all have one of two video clips, both showing a revolving gem with OpenSea’s logo emblazoned on the top. Anyone who used Gem before March 31st, 2023, can claim the NFT for free.
So far, users have minted over 71,000 or 40% of the NFTs in the Gemesis collection. The current floor price is around 0.04 ETH or $76, and the unique ownership percentage is a surprising 58%. Still, some NFT users criticized OpenSea for the collection, specifically the supply:
The NFT community has been hoping for an OpenSea token for some time, specifically one that would reward trading on the platform. But the company does not appear to be going to in that direction, at least for now.
With its new Pro version, OpenSea seems to be positioning itself into a fight with Blur. Rarity Sniper will keep an ear to the ground and report back with any developments in this story.
Related articles: