OpenSea has turned into the most prominent hub for NFT listings. The offers range from art collections, club avatars or in-game items. As of April 2022, OpenSea lists NFTs from three major blockchains: Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana, the most recently added one.
OpenSea launched in December 2017, years ahead of the 2021 NFT boom. Initially, CryptoKitties was the earliest and most popular collection. Later, hit collections like CryptoPunks also arrived, turning up the volume on OpenSea in the hundreds of millions. OpenSea is valued at $13.3B, and had revenues of $2.75B as of September 2021.
Why OpenSea Matters
OpenSea is one of the NFT tools to settle the price for collectible and gaming items. It is the first tool to check for the value held in Play to Earn games.
OpenSea also opens the market to any user willing to pay a listing fee and possibly receive the asking price. The trading hub also tracks the performance of collections, with key data such as the floor price of a collection.
OpenSea Minting
Minting an NFT on OpenSea may mean the actual media is listed and carried by the company’s resources. There are other options with dedicated services to host NFT items.
The platform has issued a series of rules to avoid plagiarism and copied collections. Steep minting fees aim to curb flooding with low-value images, while listing fees prevent abuse. There is still no way to track for “wash trading” where one user buys and sells their own NFTs to inflate the value.
What are the OpenSea Fees
Account creation before listing any NFT for sale may run up gas fees between $70 and $300 depending on gas expenses on the Ethereum network.
Listing fees for individual NFTs may go between $10 and $30. Additionally, OpenSea charges a 2.5% commission on resale value for each NFT.
OpenSea uses a Wrapped ETH (WETH) token linked to the value of actual ETH, to save on fees and achieve prompt payments.
How to Start with OpenSea
OpenSea will ask for an initial fee during the process of account creation and wallet initialization.
The platform is compatible with MetaMask, which can be set up to Ethereum and Polygon. It’s important to have enough ETH for fees to initialize the wallet after creating an account.
How to Buy NFT on OpenSea
Browse to the NFT page of the preferred project and select an item. Make sure to navigate to the verified NFT. Avoid following links from personal chats and other solicitations to buy an item.
Check the floor price and median price, to make sure the item is fair value. For some items, it is possible to bid in various auction-type sales.
The OpenSea interface will only call to the MetaMask wallet when the item has been selected, just ahead of approving the payment.
