OpenSea, despite some unflattering PR recently, is continuing to play its part in the NFT space, which boomed in 2021 and shows no signs of abating in 2022.
The NFT market started 2022 with a bang. First, a new marketplace called LooksRare that rewards buyers and sellers with its native token, called LOOKS. Now OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace, had a bumper month, with a all-time high of $3.7 billion in monthly trading volume, despite having two weeks left in the month. Twitter user @mattmedved, co-founder and CEO of NFT Now, said this of NFTs on January 1, 2022, “NFTs are changing lives every day. 2021 was just the beginning. Philosophers have long heralded the arrival of the Age of Imagination, successor to the Information Age , where creativity is the primary driver of economic value, and we are clearly witnessing its dawn in real time.
The highest daily trading volume of $261M occurred on Jan. 9, 2022. The most recent month with comparable trading volume was Aug. 2021, with $3.4B. There are 377 000 active traders (traders who have made at least one transaction) for the month of Jan. 2022.
OpenSea now valued at $13.3 billion
OpenSea recently raised $300 million in a Series C funding round, seeing its valuation soar to $13.3 billion. OpenSea had a trading volume of over $2.4 billion from December 5, 2021 to January 5, 2021. The company was valued at $1.5 billion by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. This indicates a trend since Dapper Labs was valued at $7.6 billion last year.
According to a blog post published by OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer on Jan. 4, 2022, the Series C fundraising had four main goals: to accelerate product development, improve customer support and safety, invest in a meaningful way in the larger NFT community, and grow the team. Shiva Rajaman jumped ship from Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, as the new Vice President of Product. This new hire is part of the effort to bring NFTs to “a broad consumer audience.” Part of the goal is to make user interaction easier by abstracting away the nitty-gritty of blockchain technology.
LooksRare OpenSea pipe since launch
LooksRare is already vying for OpenSea’s competitor position, even though NFTs can be listed on both platforms. LooksRare has seen $3.5 billion in total trading volume since launch, while OpenSea has seen just over $1.5 billion in total trading volume. It has also beaten OpenSea on daily trading volume every day since its launch.
