Crypto Predictions: Who will be Opensea’s Disruptor?
Preface
Let’s talk about the current situation that everyone is aware of. The current NFT market has almost been monopolized. We often trade on several large platforms, so the large platform has the voice over absolutely.
As we all know, this situation is actually very unfavorable to users, because the NFT in the market is not decided by us, but by the platform to decide whether this NFT should be put on the shelves. Some people may retort that we can obviously put our own NFT on the shelves, but once our NFT is involved in political issues, or contradicts the interests of the platform, etc., it may be directly taken off the shelves by the platform. This is not untraceable.
The Flurks launched by Stonetoss, a well-known political cartoonist in the United States, was removed from the shelves because it contained the flag of the United States of America (patriotism), the rainbow flag (comrade equality), the Gadsden flag (libertarianism) and the sickle and mallet (communism). Due to a legal dispute with Larva Labs, OpenSea also removed CryptoPunks V1 from the shelves. The reason is that CryptoPunks V1 is strikingly similar to CryptoPunks NFT and also has the same smart contract, so CryptoPunks V1 was identified by OpenSea as a controversial project and removed from the shelves.
As the decentralized world of NFT trading market, why can it still be taken off the shelf at will, or is it so centralized? All this is probably because the current NFT trading market is still in the 1.0 stage.
NFT Trading Market 1.0
NFT Trading Market 1.0 can only trade NFT, provided that the NFT does not involve sensitive topics or infringe on the interests of others, the trading market is still managed by the person in charge of the market, and in general it is a centralized market and does not meet the standards of the block chain.
Currently active NFT trading platforms include OpenSea, Nifty Gateway, MakersPlace, Rarible, SuperRare and VIV3, but the behavior of these markets is manipulated behind the scenes to ensure the effective development and operation of the platform.
In fact, in the end, NFT trading market 1.0 and CEX are very similar, but the content of the transaction is different, but with a very heavy centralized color, the drawbacks will naturally arise.
The most obvious drawback of centralization is that assets are easy to control. I think everyone paid attention to the Russia-Ukraine conflict a few days ago. The US Treasury announced the freezing of the Russian Central Bank’s assets in the United States, the Russian tycoons’ yachts were confiscated, and the assets in Swiss banks could also be frozen . Do you think the encrypted world is not affected? That’s wrong. Russian artist NFT was also forcibly removed from the shelves by OpenSea . Of course, several centralized exchanges have also directly closed the trading channels of Russian users. OpenSea officials also stated that its terms of service explicitly prohibit sanctioned users or users in sanctioned regions/countries from using OpenSea’s services, including users from Iran, North Korea, Syria and Russia. This is a typical case of ordinary people suffering caused by geopolitical issues.
But in the world of encryption, this should not have happened . Obviously, the transformation of the NFT trading market from 1.0 to 2.0 is imminent, and we need a more decentralized environment to ensure asset security.
Second , the existing NFT market supports very few chains. Different markets support different chains. The NFT on this chain goes to this market to buy and sell, and the NFT on that chain goes to that market to buy and sell. What we need is not so many trading markets. We just want to have a market that can meet the needs of the NFT on the chain that we can exchange. One may form a monopoly, and there can be two more to form a tripartite confrontation. Instead of so many small markets blooming everywhere, everyone is picky.
Of course, the biggest problem is that there are too many fake NFTs in the NFT trading market. Simply search for a recently popular crypto monkey Solana Monke Rejects. There are dozens of accounts on Open S ea for sale, many of which are fake NFTs. This is undoubtedly a big hidden danger. Are these what the platform can block through code and security design?
Finally, there are too few trading forms in the existing NFT trading market. Everyone hangs up their own NFT, and buyers will buy the NFT they like. There is only one trading method. In the NFT trading market 2.0, will there be new trading methods expanded? All this is waiting for new models to explore and break through .
NFT Trading Market 2.0
If the existing NFT market 1.0 is compared to CEX, then NFT market 2.0 can undoubtedly be regarded as DEX.
NFT is actually a trading asset. So what is the core demand of the asset? Safe liquidity.
In the NFT trading market 2.0 phase, the first thing that must be done is decentralization . A firm defense of decentralization may be able to ensure asset security in essence. Centralization has greatly increased the possibility of hacker attacks. Some time ago, OpenSea was used by hackers to upgrade its market smart contract to implement phishing attacks, and NFT assets worth about 1.7 million US dollars were stolen. In the context of decentralization, users can control their own assets, hackers cannot enter users’ wallets, and users’ data will not be disclosed without authentication.
Compared with CEX, the advantages of DEX are obvious. Similarly, on the basis of the security of NFT market 2.0 decentralization, it can also have more trading scenarios, greatly increasing the liquidity of NFT. For example: NFT lending, NFT derivatives trading, NFT fragmentation of trading , NFT leasing and so on.
May I ask, if the liquidity problem of NFT is solved through the fragmentation of NFT trading market 2.0, will the trading volume of NFT see another surge?
The path of evolution
At present, the popularity of NFT trading has been declining, which is partly due to the distrust of users caused by the NFT trading market. Now many users have left OpenSea and switched to Looksrare, X2Y2, KnownOrigin. Especially after the OpenSea security incident broke out, the private life of its founder was exposed, and OpenSea did not respond in the first place, causing most users to complain. Of course, a project cannot rely too much on its founder, otherwise what is the significance of decentralization? This can be seen from the announcement of AC’s withdrawal from the circle and the sharp drop in the popularity of DeFi.
The current OpenSea is too large, and there are still many transactions on it every day. But we have reason to believe that it is often time and another giant that defeats the giant. Uniswap, which leverages the evolution of CEX to DEX, has witnessed the great power of decentralization. With the rapid evolution of products and technologies, who will become the Uniswap in the NFT trading market? We will wait and see.
