The United States-based NFT marketplace OpenSea plans to launch its redecorated platform next month to recapture users’ attention and grow its market share among rival NFT trading platforms. The announcement triggered a massive surge in the NFT marketplace’s trading activities.
Without giving an in-depth insight into the upcoming marketplace revamp, OpenSea urged users to join its waitlist by inputting their email addresses or connecting their crypto wallet. Many users expect the NFT marketplace to airdrop a cryptocurrency (maybe using the ticker $OPEN) since they have to connect digital wallets like MetaMask or Coinbase Wallet. Still, there is no proof to back the expectation. Over 250,000 users joined the waitlist less than 24 hours after the announcement.
Amid heightened curiosity, some market experts began speculating several features OpenSea may add to the redesigned platform. A DappRadar executive predicted that the NFT marketplace may incorporate additional utility to its Gemesis NFT collection, account abstraction for seamless social media login for onboarding newcomers, add support for more blockchains, and diversify to SocialFi by incorporating Farcaster or Lens Protocol.
Regarding the potential debut of OpenSea’s native crypto asset, the DappRadar executive stated that the NFT marketplace’s roots in the U.S. make it unlikely that it will execute the plan. Recall that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) probed OpenSea in August over its NFT business. The financial agency claimed that the NFT marketplace offered unregistered securities (NFTs included) to investors.
Despite the vague announcement, OpenSea’s trading volume soared over 62% within 24 hours to $5.15 million. Its Gemesis NFT saw its floor price increase to $31, representing a 237% uptrend within the same time frame.
To keep up the hype, OpenSea’s co-founder and CEO Devin Finzer wrote:
“We’ve been quietly cooking at Opensea. To really innovate, sometimes you have to take a step back and reimagine everything So we built a new OpenSea from the ground up. Sails up in December.”
Various speculations remain about OpenSea’s upcoming redecoration. Time will tell what these features are and how they will aid the NFT marketplace’s growth in the hierarchy of NFT trading platforms.
