According to Bloomberg, the popular NFT market Opensea announced its first Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Brian Roberts, the former chief financial officer of Lyft, the ride-sharing app. Three years ago, he served as the head of Microsoft’s global corporate development.
Although the new CFO has no experience in the encryption industry. In an interview, he said that the emerging Web 3.0 technology and NFT field especially reminded him of eBay in the mid-1990s.
For the future of Opensea, Roberts is already planning an initial public offering (IPO). And is discussing the issue of raising additional funds with investment institutions such as A16z, Coinbase, and Blockchain Capital. According to a person familiar with the negotiations, investment institutions are seeking to invest approximately US$1 billion at a valuation of more than US$12 billion.
Roberts stated:
“When your company is growing so fast, it is foolish for you not to consider going public. Given its growth rate, it will be popular on the open market.”
Opensea’s brilliant transcript
Opensea is a decentralized NFT market established in 2017. Users can make, buy, sell, and auction NFTs in it. The categories include collectibles, game items, virtual land, music and many other products.
So far, Opensea can be described as the largest traffic portal in the NFT field. Whether it is active number, user volume or transaction volume, Opensea is far ahead in many markets. Unlike NFT, which made headlines with millions of dollars in art sales in the first half of the year, the NFT trend in the third quarter has always been the embodiment of collectibles. For example, boring ape and cryptopunk have further contributed to the substantial improvement of Opensea.
The number of users of Opensea has been on the rise
In August, Opensea’s daily online users reached 40,000, compared with 125 in August last year. The number of online users has increased by 319 times. The total number of users who have traded NFT at least once is also hitting new highs repeatedly. According to data from Dune Analytics, in January of this year, Opensea had only 36,195 users. At the time of writing, it was 760,780, a 20-fold increase in the 11 months. At present, the monthly active number of Opensea has stabilized at more than 200,000.
This year, Opensea’s transaction volume growth is even more impressive
In January, Opensea’s monthly transaction volume was only $8.07 million. By August, the monthly transaction volume had grown to US$3.4 billion, an increase of 410 times. Compared with Rarible, the second-ranked NFT market, Opensea’s transaction volume is about 10 times that of it. Currently, Opensea’s daily trading volume is rarely less than US$50 million. Compared to competitors such as Rarible, it is an obvious giant.
The amount of ETH burned is also one of the ways to judge the growth rate of Opensea’s transaction volume
“Cost burning” is a new mechanism in the EIP-1559 proposal. It will destroy the basic ETH fee paid for the transaction. According to Ultrasound’s data, since EIP-1559 went online on August 15, Opensea has become a major burning consumer with 120,835 ETH burned. Leading popular applications such as Uniswap V2, V3, Metamask, Axie Infinity, etc.
The addition of celebrities and well-known institutions has also expanded the popularity of Opensea
Since its establishment, Opensea has not only attracted the participation of Yao Ming, Jalen Sages and other big names. It has also been favored by well-known organizations such as The Associated Press, WWE, Fortune, Budweiser, McDonald’s and so on. In addition, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, the two leading art auction houses with a history of more than 200 years, also collaborated with Opensea. In order to explore the field of digital art and consolidate their status as auction venues.
It is also because Opensea has so many dazzling performances. In July of this year, Opensea successively obtained financing from well-known investment institutions such as A16z and Coinbase at a valuation of US$1.5 billion.