OpenSea 2.0 Speculations: Points? Airdrops? NFT Launchpad?

Author: Karen, Foresight News

On November 4, Beijing time, OpenSea released a teaser animation showing a ship setting sail, indicating that the platform will launch a new version in December. At the same time, OpenSea has started registration for a waitlist, which, as of the time of writing, has already attracted 174,000 people.

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

Regarding the specific features or characteristics of the new version, based on OpenSea's responses and the author's analysis, it is speculated that it may include the following highlights:

1. According to a post by Azuki researcher and Mocaverse advisor wale.moca, the new version of OpenSea will feature a leaderboard that also provides XP points. OpenSea's official account retweeted this.

From this, it can be inferred that the new version is likely to launch a points program. Considering that OpenSea is an American company, the rewards may not necessarily be OpenSea tokens, but could also include profit sharing from the platform. It is worth noting that in August of this year, OpenSea received a Wells notice from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which threatened to sue OpenSea because they believe the NFTs on the OpenSea platform are securities. In response, OpenSea stated, "In addition to standing firm on its position, it also pledged $5 million to help cover the legal fees of NFT creators and developers who received Wells notices."

It is noteworthy that OpenSea Pro (the NFT marketplace aggregator Gem acquired by OpenSea) had previously announced on its homepage that it would launch a reward program, claiming "we are currently scoring and tracking user activity, and the game is about to begin." However, this content has since been removed from the official website.

Additionally, to commemorate the launch of OpenSea Pro, in April of last year, OpenSea Pro released the Gemesis NFT series. As of now, the floor price of this NFT series is 0.0139 ETH, having increased by 242% in the past 24 hours, with a cumulative trading volume of 8,180 ETH displayed on OpenSea. In this series, the rarity of the NFTs is closely related to the time they were first traded using Gem; the earlier the trade, the higher the rarity. Therefore, if OpenSea conducts an airdrop in the future, in addition to OpenSea's trading users, holders of Gemesis NFTs are also very likely to be considered.

1. Release some new features beneficial to artists.

2. Deeper integration with GameFi. This can be seen from OpenSea's recent actions; in late October, OpenSea integrated with the Base gaming ecosystem B3 Chain, aiming to improve users' Web3 gaming experience and support faster and cheaper minting of NFT series and in-game items.

3. Achieve account abstraction, allowing users and developers to access Web3 more easily.

4. According to @DefiIgnas's wishlist, it is hoped that OpenSea 2.0 will support Bitcoin ordinals, rune rewards, simplify onboarding, portfolio pages, and token airdrops, as well as fragmented NFTs, an NFT Launchpad, social features (similar to Instagram for NFTs), and a native mobile application. In response, OpenSea CTO Nadav Hollander stated that it is a good list and asked @DefiIgnas about their top priorities.

Of course, some speculate that OpenSea will create a pump.fun version of the NFT marketplace, although this may need to be achieved through the fragmentation of NFTs.

In the current climate of meme popularity, the revival of the NFT craze seems to be full of challenges. Especially considering that OpenSea's competitor Blur has performed poorly after issuing tokens, and Magic Eden is about to issue tokens, whether OpenSea 2.0 can reignite the NFT craze remains to be seen.

It is worth mentioning that OpenSea team member @ken_cadima will hold a technical lecture during Devcon (on November 13) to reveal the specific details of OpenSea 2.0. Foresight News will continue to follow up.