Once the face of an inappropriate token (NFT) is in the midst of reinvention. The market that helped turn digital collectibles into a global trend is trying to position itself as a Web3 home where users can seamlessly trade not only NFTs but tokens and ultimately a wide range of defi activities and other chain assets.
Earlier this year, Opensea announced that it will announce the ocean token, creating a lot of expectations about what the token will be used for and what the platform will be. Little is known about the token, but Opensea’s CMO Adam Hollander shared that the Opensea Foundation will release details in early October.
In this conversation with Coindesk, Hollander discusses the platform’s expansion beyond NFT, long-lagged ocean tokens, and the challenges of engaging both long-time users and newcomers in the increasingly crowded crypto market.
Coindesk: Who are you trying to compete against with the brand of Opensea? Where is the heading for this pivot?
Adam Hollander: We should be able to trade all kinds of assets across all types of assets and wallets very seamlessly and easily, regardless of the level of experience we have with Crypto.
If you’re someone on trench who trades every day, we have a lot of very robust features for you. And if you’re someone who has little experience with cryptography, we’re going to build a lot of very easy to use features, with very simple seamless features, to make sure you’re able to put you in encryption and experience what it’s like to exchange tokens, NFTs and other types of assets in a chain.
So, if you include trading on the platform away from the NFT Marketplace, what are some of these features mentioned as available to you?
We are the largest NFT market in the world. We are always hoping to become the world’s largest NFT market and are very deeply interested in its customer base and creators and artists, so we are not separated from NFT. We are evolving and expanding our platform, so that can be one place where you can come and trade something. The natural evolution of it over the past few months has been token trading, so you can already come to Opensea. 22 chains allow you to exchange Five tokens very seamlessly
But we are literally building new features by the day.
We don’t say our vision is limited to tokens and NFTs. There are a variety of interesting things people are currently working on chains, from real-world assets and real-world things tokenization, everything from Pokemon cards to real estate.
And while it’s not that Opensea has an immediate plan in any of these specific locations, we see this as a single place where you can call your web3 home virtually anything you’re doing in the chain.
Given that NFT volumes are not approaching their former highs, and the exchange market is so saturated, how are you planning to keep up?
Today’s volume of the NFTS isn’t what it was at its peak, literally, when Jimmy Fallon and the President and everyone else were talking about NFT every day. That being said, the NFTS alone had a billion dollar volume in the first quarter of this year alone. And it’s a vibrant market.
We actually see a significant increase in that market that year. And when it comes to token trading and memo coins, and everything else that happens in the chain outside of NFTs, there’s the hundreds of billions of dollars going on in the market, and Opensea is seeing a big growth.
Since launching the new Rewards program, we have found that Opensea alone has increased volume by around 400%. It’s really exciting for us.
The announcement of the airdrop came from the Opensea Foundation 10 months ago. It’s not released yet, so why have people been waiting so long?
The Foundation is releasing tokens. It will challenge the assumption that the token is to be released immediately from the date it is announced. There are many examples of tokens that have been hinted or officially announced. Also, there have been times when they didn’t actually come out for years afterwards. Of course, there is no right or wrong way to do this other than verifying that everyone wants to happen soon.
This would simply say that it is very important that this is not a memo coin that has been released and forgotten. Looking at the majority of coins in your example, they tend to go up to the right very quickly and fall to the right quickly.
And most of them, we’re not talking about anymore. That’s because they don’t actually serve their purpose. They have not been released for specific reasons other than what the company has decided. Start the token. And while people are always excited by the opportunity to put free money into their minds, at the end of the day, what’s important for us is that ocean tokens must be an integral part of the OPENCE ecosystem.
We are debated very carefully in creative discussions with the Foundation. As for the way that can happen, much of what we are trying to do is innovative, and much of what the foundation plans to do takes time.
I believe that it will release a token when it is appropriate to release it. That applies to what is right for Opensea, what is right for the community, what is right for the macro factor. There is a lot of calculus going into it. When we release it, we believe the market will appreciate that the fundamentals and OPENCE are very thoughtful about how the market should exist as part of our ecosystem, not as a memo coin that will be released and forgotten, and hopefully as part of our ecosystem, as something that Tokens are used to seeing airdrops.
There was a chat online from OGS. This could be angry at newcomers who might come to the platform and find a way to get free money, but OG has been stuck for years.
You may feel like you are looking for ways to balance bringing in new users on the platform, keeping engaged with the original users, and making new people quick money while giving them the incentive to stay after airdrop.
Of course, we would like to thank all the historic users who have driven the volume through Opensea over the past 7-8 years. There is a plan to look at these individuals, and the foundation believes it can be rewarded appropriately.
We also need to continue using the platform for people as a business and utilize it today as one of Crypto’s main tools. We also believe that we can effectively reward people who are participating in today’s platform and participate in various stages of reward. And whether our long-term, loyal customers are upset or not, we just say that making our entire cohort of customers an entire cohort of customers doesn’t help Opensies or the Foundation, and that those who are actively using the platform today are upsetting.
And since we have a lot of plans, I think we can do a very good job of rewarding everyone in an effective way. I can’t talk about that details. Except you know what we said in our announcement, if you’ve been in Opsy for years and you’ve driven a lot of historic volumes, we’ll see you, you’re not forgotten. And if you are using the platform today and are participating in our rewards program, you will be considered meaningfully by the TGE Foundation.
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