Everything You Need to Know About OpenSea

Since the beta launch in December 2017, OpenSea has more than 200,000 employees and 600,000 users. OpenSea has delivered more than 80 million NFTs to market. Comprising more than two million NFT collections, trading volumes are more than $20 billion.

In the early days, the platform supported the trading of CryptoKitties. Launched on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain in November 2017, CryptoKitties is a blockchain game developed by now renowned Dapper Labs, who is also behind the NBA’s TopShot, among others.

In the early days of digital assets, players could create, own, and trade virtual kitties, each kitty a one-of-a-kind.

The OpenSea vision later extended beyond CryptoKitties, with OpenSea also offering a platform and the necessary tools to enable users to trade, create, and even launch their own digital works and collections.

Initially offering Ethereum-based NFTs, the platform has evolved to offer Polygon (MATIC) and Solana (SOL)-based NFTs to its ever-growing user base.

From CryptoKitties to Billionaires to Expansion Mode

Such has been the furor over NFTs that co-founders Finzer and Atallah became the first NFT billionaires in 2021, all thanks to CryptoKitties.

In January 2022, FX Empire reported news of OpenSea raising $300 million in Series C Funding and an OpenSea valuation of $13.3 billion.

OpenSea stated four goals for the funding, including:

• Accelerate product development.
• Improve customer support and safety.
• Invest in the wider NFT and Web3 community.
• Grow the OpenSea team.

At the time, the platform’s ultimate goal was to lower the barrier to entry and provide an environment for users to “discover, manage, and showcase their NFTs with better tools, analytics, and presentation.”