The whole NFT fervor has certainly slowed down. Amidst this, NFT marketplaces like OpenSea have been recording a downfall in terms of transaction volume. Therefore, these platforms have been sprucing up their systems in order to ease the purchase of NFTs while making them cost-efficient as well. The world’s largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea decided to transition from the Wyvern protocol to the Seaport protocol. This abrupt transition comes with an array of benefits.
High transaction costs can certainly be off-putting. With users already splurging on NFTs, paying a significant amount of gas fees has even made a few rethink their whole purchase. Addressing this issue, OpenSea decided to migrate to a self-developed Seaport protocol.
This transition would reportedly save users a whopping $460 million in gas fees for users, reducing the yearly outlook by about 35%.
OpenSea further wrote,
“Seaport is a game-changer – it’s open-source, inherently decentralized, and a modern foundation that will help us (and any teams using it) build and release new features more quickly.
This wasn’t the only benefit of this transition onto Seaport. New users on OpenSea would no longer have to pay an initialization fee while setting up their accounts. In addition to this, the confirmation of actions employing a wallet would be streamlined as well.
While the aforementioned functions would be found during the launch, OpenSea users would have a few more features to avail themselves of in the coming days. This includes bulk listings, real-time creator fees along with the inclusion of multiple payout addresses for creators.
Is this an attempt to boost OpenSea’s volume?
As seen in the above image the monthly volume of OpenSea has been on a downward trend since April. The platform witnessed a 25 percent drop in Ethereum transaction volume in May from the month of April. Looking at the current chart, the community speculates the persistence of the same sentiment throughout June. The ongoing bear certainly adds to this depleting volume.
Additionally, OpenSea has been rolling out an array of updates over the last couple of weeks. This is speculated to be due to the depleting volume of the largest NFT marketplace.