OpenSea NFT is the largest NFT marketplace in the world. Although Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) were first introduced a long time ago, they took over the world in early 2021. OpenSea NFT is a marketplace that lets you buy, sell, and even create your own NFTs on its platform. Read along if you want to learn more about this blockchain marketplace.
To give you a recap, a Non-Fungible Token is proof of ownership against an asset, which can either be a digital or a physical one. If you want to buy or make an investment in an NFT, you have to deal with a blockchain platform. These platforms are known as NFT marketplaces. You can think of them as Amazon or BestBuy for crypto assets.
Alex Atallah and Devin Finzer created the OpenSea NFT marketplace in 2018. However, the total number of people or users remained far less than their projections for three years. Then came Covid-19, and people started talking more about blockchain technology, especially Ethereum Blockchain. And this craze turned into a revolution when Beeple’s art was sold for 69 million USD at Christie’s auction. In another story, billionaire Winklevoss twins created Nifty Gateway, another NFT market, for high-quality art.
That’s when the magic happened, and people started flocking towards OpenSea NFT. It provided a simple yet intuitive blockchain experience where users buy, sell and create NFTs.
In July 2021, Andreessen Horowitz raised $100 million at a valuation of $1.5 billion. As you can imagine, OpenSea has become the gateway for newcomers and veterans alike into the NFT and blockchain realm.
Before starting to buy or sell NFTs, you need to have a digital wallet. Like a traditional leather wallet, a digital wallet, aka crypto wallet, will keep your addresses and digital assets safe. There is no need to get into the technicalities at this point. The only thing you need to do is choose a wallet and create an account. The most popular choice on the Ethereum blockchain and OpenSea NFT marketplace is MetaMask.
Next, you need to get some Ether (ETH) in your wallet. ETH is just a cryptocurrency, and it should not be confused with Ethereum Blockchain. For this purpose, you need to connect a crypto exchange or brokerage to your wallet. Again, the most popular choice is Coinbase. But if you want another choice apart from Coinbase, you can check out Fortmatic.
Now that the setup is complete, you can search for the Non-Fungible Token you want. On the landing page, you will see a search bar with filter options. You can either filter out different NFTs or search for a particular one.
OpenSea allows three different ways of selling NFTs.
The first one is the Fixed Price Listing. As the name suggests, the seller creates a listing for one or more of his assets. And he puts a fixed price on it, usually in ETH. People can then see the listing and purchase it with a single tap.
Next is the Dutch Auction Listing. In this type of sale, the seller creates a listing of the items and puts a starting price and an ending price. Additionally, the seller also has to specify the auction duration. When the auction starts, anyone can click and buy the items. However, as time passes, the price continues to decrease.
Lastly, the seller can also create an English Auction. Before participating in this auction, you have to convert your ETH to WETH. You can do this conversion on OpenSea. Then, you can click on Bid. When you click on a bid, you have to make sure to either enter a number equal to or higher than the lowest bid. When the bid is complete, you have to wait until the auction ends. If your bid remains the top one, you will get the ownership of that particular artwork or asset.
Similar to buying, selling on this marketplace is a risk-free and tension-free process. You just have to create listings of your items, and the Similar to buying, selling on this marketplace is a risk-free and tension-free process. You just have to create listings of your items, and the transactions are then covered by this platform. As discussed in the previous portion, you can decide how you want to list your collection. For this purpose, you can use any of the three listing methods.
For instance, when you share a listing with the people, the market will make sure that you complete the transaction. Similarly, when someone is buying the items, OpenSea will make sure that they will follow through. Your collections and transactions are tracked by smart contracts and protocols. This is why, you have to pay a gas fee on your transactions, even if you are buying or selling.
The price of your unique collection is set by you, but it will depend on the rarity and the uniqueness of the items you share.
The first step to buying this pixel art NFT is to create a digital wallet. You can choose from many wallets, but MetaMask is a common choice. You can download a plugin in your browser to use this wallet. Then, you can buy Ether (Eth) from Coinbase directly from your wallet.
The next step is to connect your wallet with the website of Larva Labs. Although they maintain this market of punks, they do not charge any extra fees for the transaction. Then, you can easily check if a current owner is offering the CryptoPunks for sale. There will be buttons inside the plugin to buy or sell your CryptoPunk NFT.
Sometimes the seller can either offer the token for a fixed amount or sell via an auction. Just like a traditional auction, the highest bid gets the token.
If you have any confusion regarding the creation of wallets or buying crypto, you can check our other guides. We have covered these topics in detail to make the process easy for you.
Ever since Christie’s had that iconic auction, the crypto realm has been dominated by Non-Fungible Tokens. This market alone has been responsible for pushing the crypto realm to the extreme of billion dollars and above. OpenSea NFT allows the trading of these assets, and you can find several types of digital assets on this platform. We hope this guide will help you learn about this market and platform. Check out the rest of our guides if you have any more questions regarding NFT sales.
