OpenSea Launches No-Fee ‘Pro’ Marketplace With NFT Rewards

Lengthy-time main NFT market OpenSea has debuted a brand new tactic in its battle in opposition to upstart rival Blur, at this time asserting the launch of OpenSea Professional—a market with extra strong buying and selling instruments than the usual model, plus zero market charges (for now) and plans for NFT-based buying and selling rewards.

OpenSea Professional is a rebranded and expanded model of Gem V2, the upgraded model of the NFT market aggregator that it acquired in April 2022. On the time, co-founder and CEO Devin Finzer framed the transfer as one in direction of buying “extra skilled, ‘professional’ customers.”

Beneath the brand new title, OpenSea Professional continues to be billed as a separate product from the usual market, albeit now underneath the identical model umbrella. Based on an announcement put up, OpenSea Professional aggregates listings from greater than 170+ NFT marketplaces giant and small, together with notable platforms like Blur, LooksRare, and X2Y2.

It additionally provides customers extra flexibility when trying to find NFT listings and managing their stock of digital property, in addition to aggregation of open NFT assortment provides throughout marketplaces.

OpenSea’s essential market just lately lower its typical 2.5% platform charge amid the rise of rival Blur, which overtook OpenSea by way of NFT buying and selling quantity in February. The agency introduced at this time that OpenSea will reinstate its commonplace charge amid the launch of OpenSea Professional whereas the Professional platform will as an alternative provide a short lived 0% charge for merchants.

When it comes to creator royalties, OpenSea Professional will keep OpenSea’s present mannequin, which is to require solely a 0.5% minimal royalty on initiatives that don’t use an on-chain enforcement methodology. Sellers might select to pay greater than 0.5% if they want. A royalty is a charge paid to the unique NFT creator and is usually set at 5-10% of the secondary sale worth.

Blur’s rise to the highest of the NFT house is fueled largely by BLUR token rewards paid out to merchants, to the tune of over $200 million value of tokens when the preliminary airdrop occurred in February. OpenSea doesn’t have a token, and doesn’t seem like going that route—however it would provide one other sort of reward to OpenSea Professional merchants.

OpenSea will “[chart] a unique course by that includes NFTs as rewards,” in keeping with a weblog put up, though the corporate has but to disclose particulars. Individually from the reward NFTs, OpenSea will even provide a free “Gemesis” NFT mint for customers who purchased an NFT through Gem earlier than March 31.

Regardless of shedding the highest spot by way of NFT market buying and selling quantity, OpenSea nonetheless boasts extra energetic customers than Blur—practically 91,000 distinctive Ethereum wallets over the previous week in comparison with about 41,000 for Blur, per public blockchain knowledge aggregated by Dune.

OpenSea had some $424 million value of NFT trades within the month of March, in keeping with knowledge from DappRadar, in comparison with about $1.35 billion for Blur. Nevertheless, Blur’s vastly elevated buying and selling motion in latest months has drawn scrutiny and criticism for attracting merchants who quickly flip NFTs en masse in an effort to generate token rewards.