NFTs
OpenSea Wants NFTs to Evolve as Market Plunges 63%
The past year has not been kind to non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Sales of blockchain-based digital assets fell 63% to $8.7 billion in 2023, even as volume tripled between October and November, Bloomberg News reported on Sunday (Jan. 14), citing data from CryptoSlam.
As that report notes, NFTs were a defining characteristic of the crypto bull market in 2021, considered the most affordable way for everyday consumers to access the digital currency market.
They were even a status symbol of sorts: anyone willing to spend the money could buy an NFT and make it their Twitter profile photo. These days, says Bloomberg, X – as Twitter is now called – no longer supports NFT profile photos.
Devin FinzerNFT Marketplace CEO Open seatold Bloomberg that the industry thinks of NFTs as more than just collectibles, and said he defines the success of the industry – and the company – as more than just sales numbers.
“One of the things we’re most excited about is not necessarily how to generate the most volume, but rather how to build the most compelling use cases for NFTs,” he said.
Finzer said his company is working on “OpenSea 2.0,” an updated platform that he says will provide a better user experience and greater differentiation between NFT categories as more uses for the tokens develop.
Right now, he added, NFTs are displayed the same way on OpenSea and other platforms, no matter if they are a game token or an event ticket.
“We really want to have a marketplace interface that can be better customized to suit each type of use case,” he said, adding that OpenSea is working to display ticket NFTs on a calendar and sort them by date.
The report also notes that although NFT sales were falling, the bitcoin price – the most popular cryptocurrency – jumped 160% in 2023.
However, over the past year, crypto startups have struggled to raise funds amid a regulatory crackdown and two high-profile criminal cases.
Venture capital investment in the crypto industry has fallen to just US$9.5 billion during the year, less than a third of the previous year’s total.
The industry’s problems were especially pronounced during the fourth quarter, when FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of multiple accusations of fraudand Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao pleaded guilty to violating anti-money laundering requirements.