- OpenSea is reported to have registered in the Cayman Island, fueling speculations of possible token launch and massive airdrops.
- The co-founder of the NFT marketplace recently hinted that there could be a revamp in December to reposition the platform for more engagement.
On November 4, the co-founder and CEO of the popular NFT marketplace OpenSea, Devin Finzer, announced that the platform would be undergoing a holistic relaunch. However, little details were provided on this. Even so, Finzer assured that the revamped platform would be made available in December 2024. Following this disclosure, speculations emerged that airdrops could accompany the relaunch. However, no official announcement has been made to this effect.
Recently, CNF reported that an independent researcher who is associated with the Azuki NFT collection Waleswoosh has disclosed that the OpenSea Foundation has registered in Cayman Island. Fascinatingly, this has rekindled the speculations that the NFT marketplace could be planning on launching its cryptocurrency and rewarding users through airdrop. Fueling this speculation, Matter Labs’ manager “Golem,” highlighted in an X post that the platform has the chance to “turn everything around” and reward old users.
OpenSea officially registered a foundation in the Cayman Islands. This means that an OpenSea token is coming. I pray that they reward their OG users, myself & many others who came up on NFTs & OpenSea in 2021. They literally have the chance to turn everything around.
Meanwhile, others doubt whether this potential airdrop could account for the significant level of trading volume recorded in 2021 and 2022. Additionally, these users believe that OpenSea may be emulating competitors like Blur and Magic Eden, which issued their native tokens to expand their user base.
Are OpenSea going to backdate their token airdrop? Imagine if they pulled transactions back from 2021/2022. After seeing Blur and Magic Eden airdrop, I doubt OpenSea won’t go down a similar path to improve their volume and revenues in V2
I’ll keep an eye on it, though, and also… https://t.co/jPJKpRykOp— Waw 
(@WawKasem) December 14, 2024
The Struggle of OpenSea
Over the past several months, OpenSea has been affected by declining business operations as a result of low engagement in the NFT sector. According to reports, four of its essential managers have also resigned in the past few months. Our research shows that Shiva Rajaraman resigned from the position of Chief Operating Officer. Jeremy Fine, who was heading the business and corporate development, has also left the company. Additionally, former lead lawyer of OpenSea Karen Kreuzkamp and the vice president of finance Justin Jow have also left the company.
Currently, Rajaraman is working with Uber, while Fine is working with OpenAi as a growth and product partner. Jow also works with Scale AI, while Kreuzkamp works with Tools for Humanity.
OpenSea’s trading volume has been poor ever since it witnessed a 33% decline in March. At that time, the platform’s weekly user base also decreased to 21,000 traders. In April, OpenSea witnessed a further decline as its monthly users declined to 73,000, the worst it ever recorded since August 2021. Fascinatingly, the platform was boasting of 500,000 monthly users at its peak.
Further looking at other areas, we observed that the number of NFTs sold in April had decreased to 134,197, its worst since June 2021. Also, this figure was 19 times less than its peak when it sold 2.5 million NFTs in a single month.
In September, Magic Eden was reported to be the largest NFT marketplace after surpassing Blur and eclipsing OpenSea. At that time, Magic Eden had a trading volume of $122.47 million, representing 36.7% of the total NFT market share.
