OpenSea’s new update is a fresh glow-up enhancing user experience and navigation. The marketplace also hinted at new redesign updates coming soon; however, it seems to be ignoring the ongoing backlash and lawsuits due to security concerns, which might be quite damaging in the long term. How will OpenSea maintain its position as a top marketplace and deal with these allegations?
OpenSea is the oldest and biggest NFT marketplace that provides users with the best features and freedom when buying, selling, and trading digital collectibles. As a global platform, OpenSea has received a lot of traffic whenever an NFT collection drops.
Until recently, the marketplace has seen a significant drop in its sales and website interaction. Many blame it on the market crash while others blame it on the surging inflation prices. Whatever the case might be, OpenSea is still busy doing touch-ups on its website and also changed its Twitter profile picture and website logo with a rainbow flag to celebrate pride month.
OpenSea gets a new look
OpenSea updated its website to give a new look. Although it’s not a completely new look, a few touch-ups enhanced the overall impression of the marketplace. They also posted an official announcement to give its community a detailed guide to the new look.
According to the announcement, they introduced new profile pages that will enable creators to highlight their preferred content, making it easier for users to navigate through the collection.
The marketplace also introduced a new feature within collections. Users can search for certain NFTs on the search bar on the profile page. They can also rank the collections within the profile based on their preferences.
For example, if a user is looking for NFTs from low to high price, they can simply select the option from filters and the website will automatically refresh with the ranking.
Overall, OpenSea made the profile pages look more expanded to increase engagement and help in navigation. Before the profile was shrunk to a certain size making the descriptions look longer and overwhelming. The new update gives a more breathable look for users.
These updates might be very facilitative for users, but they don’t fulfill the demands or complaints of the users. For the past few weeks, OpenSea has received severe backlash regarding various cases.
OpenSea fails to maintain its sales
According to DappRadar, OpenSea recorded a decrease in average selling price, no. of traders, and trading volume since last month despite being the most active marketplace among all.
The reasons are already apparent because of the crypto crash. In May 2022, the crypto community experienced a bear market for all cryptocurrencies. The most affected cryptocurrency was UST/LUNA which saw a historical crash, causing a lot of chaos and anxiety among investors and traders.
Amidst this crash, the NFT market failed to maintain its popularity because everyone rushed to save themselves from the crash. Although many NFT projects were dropped in May including BAYC’s Otherside NFT collection for metaverse, the marketplace was unable to recover the records it made last year or the year before.
The peak as shown on the chart above is when the Otherside NFT collection dropped and the prices surged high. After that, the marketplace was unable to recover its sales.
May wasn’t the only hard month for OpenSea; in fact, the NFT sales and engagement have been declining for a few months now.
So, as OpenSea updates its new look, what is the marketplace doing to improve its sales? No one really knows.
OpenSea security backlash and theft lawsuits
For the past few months, NFT thefts, frauds, and phishing attacks have become quite common. Every big or small investor is walking on their toes as many suffer from severe loss. As if the crypto crash wasn’t bad enough, these thefts and frauds have made it even worse for traders to survive.
Recently, an ex-OpenSea employee was caught laundering NFTs through insider trading. The company immediately fired the employee and took legal action against him.
Another case was of an NFT error on OpenSea that cost Chris Chapman a big loss. Mr.Chapman put up his NFT on OpenSea with a price of $1M. Two months later, he received a message that his NFT was bought by someone for only $300,000. Turns out a hacker had discovered an error and exploited it to steal NFT. In response to this, Mr. Chapman said that OpenSea has made “a lot of stupid, dumb mistakes,” and “They don’t really know what they’re doing.”
Similarly, many owners have complained that OpenSea doesn’t double-check the NFTs going out on the secondary market. Although this might be the same for most marketplaces, being the largest NFT platform it has suffered from a lot of backlashes.
The traders demand that the marketplace should introduce better privacy and security policies that prevent hackers from freely using the platform to commit crimes. For example, Seth Green became the victim of a phishing attack when he logged into his wallet through a phishing link that released all his NFTs on OpenSea with the least price. The actor complained to OpenSea and now the NFTs are paused with the message of suspicious activity on the platform.
OpenSea is doing its best to make its platform secure by introducing new verification and authentication guidelines, but it is also drowning in lawsuits for thefts and frauds.
There is a need for the OpenSea team to regulate policies regarding reselling NFTs, and it should be the utmost priority as traders shriek in fear of being scammed again.
Final words
Although the phishing attacks are not the marketplace’s fault, still it should be their priority to protect users from incoming threats through its platform. OpenSea has announced the team is making efforts to improve its security system.
As the largest global marketplace, the company understands the importance of gaining traders’ and investors’ trust to maintain its longevity in the market.
The new update does enhance user navigation on the platform but the company should first solve its underlying issues, else there’s no use for these updates because, with this new update, it is highly unlikely for OpenSea to recover its sales.
Until then, here is a Twitter thread by the OpenSea support team to help users stay safe on Discord and other platforms:
