Once one of the largest NFT marketplaces and a staunch supporter of Ethereum’s ERC-721 protocol, OpenSea has decided to go multi-blockchain, conduct an Initial Coin Offering (ICO)-style airdrop, and try to recoup losses from its 98% decline in trading volumes.
In an announcement today, the exchange said it’s working on an airdrop of its new SEA tokens, reworking its website, and adding deeper support for over a dozen blockchains.
OpenSea is also adding support for cross-blockchain NFT purchases, such as buying a Solana NFT using a non-Solana payment method. It’s also reducing its marketplace fees to 0.5% and swap fees to $0 for its OS2 Open Beta.
The exchange achieved unicorn status as an early startup, riding a wave of trading activity that peaked at $476 million on May 1, 2022, following the launch of Bored Ape Yacht Club’s Otherdeed metaverse land.
Today, trading volumes have declined 98% from that figure and rarely exceed single-digit millions.
Three years since the glory days
On almost every relevant metric, the multi-year decline is evident. In January 2022, OpenSea boasted monthly NFT sales of over 5 million. By January 2025, however, sales were down 80%.
OpenSea’s royalty fees were $268 million in January 2022, yet failed to reach even $4 million last month.
The company is hopeful that its new ICO airdrop and platform redesign will help it recover. OpenSea laid off 56% of its workforce after receiving a Wells Notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in August 2024.
That Wells Notice expressed concern about potential unregistered securities on the platform.
Read more: NFT wash trade accounts for 6.5% of daily sales volume on OpenSea
OpenSea has also faced stiff competition from other NFT marketplaces like Blur and Magic Eden. Magic Eden incidentally saw some success with adding other NFT-supporting blockchains like Ethereum and Polygon after initially supporting only Polygon.
This could explain the exchange’s decision to include a substantial number of new blockchains in OpenSea 2.0.
Overall, OpenSea is simply struggling to deal with a multi-year decline in NFT popularity. These days, most traders simply prefer fungible memecoins rather than non-fungible media.
Its website relaunch and token offering is unlikely to change this global trend.
