ON–151: NFT Marketplaces (Part 2)
Coverage on OpenSea.
Jan 6, 2023
- In spite of the frigid NFT winter, OpenSea has remained Ethereum’s leading NFT marketplace and boasts a dominant marketshare vs. its competitors when it comes to users (70%) and sales (60%). While its monthly trading volume peaked at $4.8b (1.6m ETH) in early 2022 before declining in June and then seeing a yearly ATL in November ($255m or 194k ETH), there has been a noticeable recovery recently. Declines on unique traders and trade counts were much smaller at ~40%. Unique traders fell from 500k to 300k, whereas trade counts fell from 2.4m to 1.5m. In 2022, 93% of trades on OpenSea honored royalties, compared to 19% on other marketplaces, which has made it extremely attractive to creators.
- OpenSea's new royalty policy officially started this week. NFT collections must block royalty evading marketplaces in smart contracts to be eligible for assured royalties on OpenSea. During trial period, 31.6% of new collections abide by the new policy. Adoption rate rose progressively, from 14% to 40%.
- The new policy increased OpenSea's market share. OpenSea occupied 83% of volume, and 91% of trades among royalty enforced collections. Whereas the numbers for other collections were 59% and 79%, respectively.
