In an official statement posted on June 14, 2022, OpenSea announced it is migrating to a new protocol called Seaport. The largest NFT marketplace detailed that the protocol will cut down the gas fee by 35% saving millions of users from paying an expensive fee along with other features.
OpenSea is the oldest and biggest NFT marketplace around the world. For many years since its launch, OpenSea has made its name in the mainstream media for having some of the best NFT collections.
The marketplace not only enables creators to showcase their talent but also provides easy-to-navigate features for buyers to buy, sell, or trade NFTs.
However, many people complain about the high gas fee which prevents them from making much money from the NFTs.
To answer their plea, OpenSea announced its major migration into the Seaport protocol which will cut down the gas fee by 35%. The team updated about the transition in its official community blog with a detailed explanation of new features it will introduce for users on the platform.
What is Seaport?
Seaport is mainly a Web 3 marketplace protocol for OpenSea. The official blog describes it as the “game changer” with “open source, inherently decentralized, and a modern foundation that will help us build and release new features more quickly.”
This protocol is quite different from the other marketplaces. Usually, in most NFT marketplaces one party agrees to supply an NFT and the other agrees to supply a payment token for listings.
In Seaport, the protocol allows users to make a supply for a number of items called an “offer.” The recipients must receive the supply of items included in the offer called “consideration.” This whole interaction will be fully automated through a smart contract with no central authority involved, making it more decentralized than ever.
Before its official launch, OpenSea held a Seaport Audit Contest running on code4rena with a $1 million prize pool. The community members could win the prize based on their findings from reviewing the Seaport contract.
Seaport update features
Users will be able to see the protocol through new updates on OpenSea. According to the blog post, the following are the main improvements with the migration:
- Low gas fee
- A feature that will enable users to make offers of an entire collection or select items with the same traits
- Users no longer have to pay the account initialization fee
- Optimized transactions, safety, and security
With Seaport, the team claimed the updates will come faster and have more credibility than before.
Ever since the launch, OpenSea has made continuous efforts to facilitate its users and create a safe environment. Before this announcement, OpenSea introduced verification features to remove NFT copymints. It also refreshed a new look for collection profiles.
Although the marketplace has been facing lower-traffic amidst the declining crypto market, the team is still taking bold steps to improve its platform and facilitate its users.
The low gas fee is one of the best features OpenSea can provide to its users since the biggest hurdle for investors and buyers was the fee. “You’ll save an estimated 35% in gas fees for transactions using Seaport,” says OpenSea.
The team also claimed that compared to last year’s earnings, the low gas fee will be more than 138k ETH, around $460M in total savings for this year due to the protocol. The team also removed the one-step proxy deployment fee which will save users $120M each year.
The team also elaborated on the Collection Offers and Trait Offers which is only available for the first 100 collections based on the website’s 30-day volume ranking.
Future updates
OpenSea will be introducing more features through the protocol marketplace including bulk listings to buy many NFTs in a single transaction and real-time creator fees. The team also shared they will be looking for new ideas to bring innovation to the platform.
