rgence of Blur that the NFT market has completely changed its appearance.output: title: The Rise and Fall of OpenSea: From NFT Trading Giant to Token Issuer

On the evening of February 13, OpenSea announced the launch of the OS2 public beta version on X, and will launch the platform token SEA

Blur's UI design that many people began to complain about OpenSea's UI. Some people even said that OpenSea should learn from Blur's UI design. In fact, OpenSea has also made some adjustments to its UI in recent months, but the overall changes are not obvious.

In addition to the UI, OpenSea's high handling fees and slow response to the community have also become槽点. In fact, OpenSea has adjusted its handling fees several times, but each adjustment has encountered strong opposition from the community. In the end, OpenSea had to cancel the handling fee adjustment plan and continue to maintain the 2.5% handling fee.

In terms of community response, OpenSea has indeed been slow in recent months. For example, in the second half of 2022, there was a wave of NFT copyright disputes, and many NFT projects were sued by Miramax and Paramount. At that time, the community hoped that OpenSea could take some measures to protect NFT creators, but OpenSea did not respond positively.

In addition, OpenSea's large-scale layoffs at the end of 2022 also caused dissatisfaction among employees. Some employees said that they learned about the layoffs from the news and did not receive any notice from the company.

output: OpenSea announced on the evening of February 13 that the OS2 public beta version will be launched on X and will launch the platform token SEA, hinting that it will conduct an airdrop. Although the specific timetable and details have not yet been announced, this announcement has undoubtedly touched the hearts of many old players in the cryptocurrency circle. In just one hour, the number of comments and reposts on the tweet has exceeded 1,000, and the community discussion has soared.

OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer also tweeted to emphasize that "OS2, which is being launched, is not just a new product, and SEA is not just a token, but a brand new OpenSea built from scratch." There have also been some rumors that the new version of OpenSea will refer to Blur's transaction-centric UI.

OpenSea is finally going to issue a coin. If it were three years ago, this would definitely be a much-anticipated carnival in the cryptocurrency circle. However, things are different now. Today's cryptocurrency circle is dominated by MemeCoin, and NFT has long been "outdated". What's even more regrettable is that even if we limit our focus to the NFT field, OpenSea is no longer glorious. According to Dune data, OpenSea's trading volume in January was only US$195 million, a 96% drop from the peak of US$5 billion in early 2022, and its annual revenue has shrunk to approximately US$33.26 million.

According to nftpulse data, as of press time, Opensea's market share in the past 30 days has dropped sharply from 95% in December 2021 to 29%; on the other hand, OpenSea's valuation has also fallen from its peak of US$13.3 billion in early 2023 to around US$1.5 billion, and it even fell to the point of being "sold".

So, why did OpenSea, once the dominant player in the NFT trading market, come to this point?

Let’s review the brief history of OpenSea’s development and see how it rose rapidly and how it fell from the throne in the NFT market competition. Finally, let’s talk about what impact OpenSea’s decision to issue tokens at this time may have on the entire NFT market landscape.

The early days: surviving in the NFT wasteland

There is no doubt that among the startups in the Web3 field, OpenSea is undoubtedly a legendary company that started from scratch. Especially in the two years from 2021 to 2022, the company has leapt from obscurity to a super "unicorn" with a valuation of US$13.3 billion at an astonishing speed, and has firmly sat on the top spot in the NFT trading market. However, behind this glorious period is a dramatic history of market ups and downs. Therefore, the author believes that the rise and fall of OpenSea can also be seen as a microcosm of the NFT industry's transition from wild growth to rational competition.

In September 2017, Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah won seed round financing from the well-known venture capital incubator Y Combinator with their innovative project "Wificoin". This project aims to use cryptocurrency to pay for shared WiFi and has nothing to do with the NFT track.

However, in November 2017, Dapper Labs officially launched the Ethereum-based crypto cat game CryptoKitties, which triggered a wave of hype. The frenetic bidding once pushed the price of CryptoKitties' NFT collections to