OpenSea: in summary
Opensea launched in December 2017 as an alpha on the Rinkby testnet, eventually migrating to the mainet in 2018. The platform has had huge success becoming the most popular marketplace with over 600,000 people signed up, over 2,000,000 NFT collections listed on the site, over 80,000,000 NFT’s in those collections and a trading volume of over $10 Billion!
This site has dedicated time, effort, blood sweat and tears to get its operation to where it is now and this is why it is number 1.
The NFT marketplace is relatively new and OpenSea have made their mark on the market already, we expect to see them at the top for quite some time.
OpenSea Marketplace Overview
The Opensea Marketplace was Founded in 2017 by Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah, these two came together into the crypto NFT marketplace and started by simply talking to users in Discord communities and decided to create an open marketplace we now know today as OpenSea.
OpenSea is a platform you can easily navigate through. Signing up is simple, with a step by step process that you can follow with ease.
Logged in or not, you can browse the NFT’s that are listed on the platform, they have many different options available for you to have a play around with and have everything laid out in a manner that once you have had a go with the site for a while, you will pick it up quite quickly.
OpenSea Review
Starting the Opensea review, what is the Opensea Marketplace?
OpenSea is the biggest, most popular and user-friendly NFT market out there.
We don’t know what is in store for the future regarding NFT Markets but what we do know is that people from all skill levels will be able to easily browse, buy, and sell NFTs at OpenSea
From collectors to creators, this platform allows users to decide where they want to go with their NFT journey and how they will do it.
OpenSea, is a well put together but simple landing page. Unknowingly what to look for, there is a neatly placed ‘Explore’ button at the top and just below it was something that seemed to be an endless Rolodex of NFT collections which all looked so different, interesting and a little bit confusing.
Collections are laid out in a professional manner which are easy to understand and things quickly make sense for most users. Words such as ‘Floor Price’, ‘Volume Traded’, ‘items’ and ‘Owners’ on the website are not too hard to wrap your head around and understand. After a little while of browsing, surfing and playing around, you should be able to get the hang of things. Knowing what NFT’s to buy, that’s a whole different question, but what the platform helps you understand is what the NFT’s are, how the system works, how they are traded and how to buy/sell using their platform.
I think all a developer of digital marketplaces wants is a user-friendly utility that is so simple to understand a grandmother could use it and in all fairness, they have not come far off that ease of usability.
When it comes to setting up your collection yourself on there and listing your NFT’s to Mint, that seems much more of a daunting task.
There is without a doubt an easy to follow, step by step process from the first click of the ‘Create’ button on the home page, and an easy plug-in wallet connection such as ‘Metamask’. The best way to tackle this I’d say is to have a youtube video guide side by side the platform and watch and implement at the same time. This will ensure you do it correctly by learning from someone else’s mistakes, save you a lot of hassle and speed things up. The platform has everything you need to list your collection, understanding it is more of the task at hand when looking to create your NFT collection via OpenSea.
How Does OpenSea Work?
To get started with the OpenSea Marketplace, you will need to make sure you have a wallet connected. You can use the following wallets with OpenSea:
Once your wallet is connected you are ready to get started bidding or buying NFTs from the various collections at OpenSea.
When you post your listing, there are things to keep an eye out such as currency and price, always make sure you double-check this.
By double check, I mean make sure you DO NOT add or remove unnecessary 0’s to the listing price… It wouldn’t be the first time it happened, one BAYC sold for $3000 rather than the $300,000 it was meant to be listed for! Check out the story here.
If the purchase is successful you will receive an email and OpenSea will take a 2.5% fee on whatever the final sale price was.
OpenSea is a decentralised platform and its NFT technology runs on the Ethereum blockchain. Users can use Smart contracts to engage with the platform.
Their focus is predominantly matching artists / sellers with buyers, they are the middle men hence the fee.
Opensea has good usability across all devices, for desktop the website opensea.io is good enough, but for mobile we would recommend using their app which can be found in the google play store or apple store.
What Features Does the OpenSea Marketplace Have?
The sole purpose of this platform, which out of any others it does best, is its ability to create, set up, sell, exchange and auction NFTs!
This platform allows usability like no other, you can create NFTs and trade ones that are already on the platform.
These NFTs are in the forms of Trading cards, Music, Collectibles, Art, Sports Assets, Domain names and membership passes.
That’s just to name a few uses for the OpenSea marketplace; in reality there are plenty more!
With OpenSea being the number one marketplace for NFTs, there is without doubt access to the widest and largest number of people in the NFT space.
This makes OpenSea, when selling and buying NFTs, the best place to go and gives you the highest probability you will have success with your goals.
The OpenSea Marketplace has a great deal of statistics and data for every NFT that is listed on their platform, meaning you can always keep track of the latest and highest achieving NFTs.
This is great for everyday people, people who want to flip NFTs or even keep track of one they may own on a collection.
There are 150 cryptocurrencies you can use on Opensea to transact. This should give most people at least one option and little hassle when starting out trading on the OpenSea platform.
Fee’s are pretty low, not the lowest industry-wide but more than reasonable, especially with the client base they have.
When it comes to purchasing an NFT, no matter which platform, there will be a relevant fee involved, usually a percentage of the purchase price which is paid by the buyer in most cases.
Opensea charges the buyer the fee of 2.5% to the platform in each NFT transaction. As a sellers market, there are no Listing fee’s, the creator can also stack royalties on the NFT meaning in any case of a transaction, they will make a percentage.
There are Opensea gas fee’s which you should take into account, these are due to the Ethereum market and are called ‘Opensea Gas fees’:
- Accepting an offer
- Transferring / Gifting NFT
- Buying an NFT
- Cancelling a listed NFT
- Cancelling a bid
- Converting WETH back to ETH, and vice cersa
- Freezing your metadata
- Bridging or Withdrawing ETH to and from Polygon
What Wallets Does OpenSea Support?
You can use the following wallets with OpenSea:
Once your wallet is fully connected and established you are ready to get started Minting, Bidding or buying NFT’s within different collections on the market.
The wallets Opensea have picked are regarded as the top performers in terms of security, which is the first priority with any crypto trading.
If you don’t have a secure wallet, or share your info, you are at risk of being hacked, resulting in losing crypto and NFT assets.
The most secure option when using Opensea is to have a hardware wallet such as Ledger, using this with Metamask will synergise your experience and most importantly, safety.
How Can I Link My Wallet to OpenSea?
To start with OpenSea, you will need an Ethereum wallet. This will allow you to hold and store your Cryptocurrency and NFT’s. The most common currencies used on OpenSea for trading NFT’s are ETH/WETH.
Go to the collect wallet tab on OpenSea, then choose which type of wallet you are connecting to the site – we recommend Metamask.
Once connected, you will need to sign for approval and confirm that you want to connect with OpenSea.
Once connected, go ahead and fill out your information settings such as Username, Email address, socials, bio etc.
You are now connected and ready to start trading on the OpenSea market!
How Do I Buy NFTs at OpenSea?
Now you have your OpenSea wallet set up, how do you buy an NFT? It’s very simple and here we will walk you through, step by step.
Upon sign-in, you will be presented with an explore tab or you can manually search in the bar for a particular collection.
You could even browse the top charts and see if any of the top performers on OpenSea, such as BAYC, tickle your fancy.
Once you have found and chosen the perfect NFT for you, you must select it and then decide if you want to make an offer or buy it directly from the seller’s listed price.
Whichever one you choose, you will need to sign off the transaction from your connected wallet.
If you choose to make an offer, assuming it’s not ridiculously undercutting the value, although that does work in some rare cases, you will have to wait until the seller either rejects or accepts your offer. If you want to cancel your offer after it has been made, you will need to pay a gas fee.
Opting to place a bid will give you a chance to get an NFT than buy it now / floor price, this works best when demand for the collection is low.
If you decide to ‘Buy Now’ the transaction will take place straight away and you will not need to wait. Your NFT will be sent over to your wallet within a few minutes! A small gas fee will also apply to this transaction.
Whichever way you go about purchasing, you can always check at the end of the transaction if everything went smoothly by going to the OpenSea Menu > Account > Profile, and then taking a look at the ‘Collected tab’.
This will display your beautiful assortments of NFTs on the particular wallet set up with that account!
How Do I Sell NFTs on the OpenSea marketplace?
OpenSea is the hub when it comes to creating a collection, listing it and having a mass auction to your community.
That’s not all… OpenSea allows you to list NFTs from your Ethereum wallet from other collections that you may have.
To get started with selling an NFT on OpenSea, first, go to menu > account > profile. Here is where you will choose the NFT you want to sell on Opesea marketplace.
Select the NFT and then the ‘Sell’ button. Set your price and finally, schedule your listing. You will see a bunch of options you don’t have to worry about too much but make sure you play around with them to get a feel of what’s going on.
You will also see the Opensea fees displayed on the bottom.
When getting into listing your NFT for sale, you can choose from four options.
1. Fixed Price sale: this is where you set the price you want as ‘Buy it now’, similar to eBay, and the listing will wait until someone decides to buy it out at the listed price.
2. Dutch Auction: in this sale format the auction will start at a high price and end lower, closer to floor price gradually over time until the end of the listing has finished.
3. Normal Auction: you will start with a price and a ‘reserve price’, list your auction for a minimum price and people will bid against each other until you decide to accept an offer or time runs out.
4. Bundle sale: listing multiple NFT’s at once is possible with this option, usually to the same buyer. This is one transaction with multiple NFT’s sold at one time. This saves the buyer Opensea gas fees.
One cool feature about being a seller with OpenSea is that you can set a royalty of up to 10% on each NFT sold if you are the original creator. This means you earn revenue on every NFT transaction if you created it.
OpenSea Review Conclusion
Clearly from reading this OpenSea review, we can tell it is the godfather of all NFT trading platforms, and with its user base, revenue, collectors and creators, it’s easy to see why it is number one and doing so well today.
If you are looking to get started in the NFT markets, OpenSea should be your first port of call.
Whether you want to become a creator, collector or simply browse a wide range of beautiful art and creative utility, OpenSea is the place to go.
Why not head over there now? I can guarantee you will stumble upon something that catches your eye!
The Opensea Fees and Opensea Gas fees are probably some of the best I have seen throughout all NFT platforms.