OpenSea Review
The self-proclaimed largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea is built on the Ethereum blockchain and offers a wide array of NFT products including art, sports cards, domain names, and NFT projects like Decentraland and CryptoKitties.
With millions of items for sale, OpenSea lives up to its claim. Creators can create their own items on the blockchain using OpenSea’s item minting tool without having to write a single line of code and OpenSea only takes 2.5% commission from sales on their platform. With the introduction of their Collection Manager feature and the ability to use Polygon’s network too, OpenSea is poised to continue its reign as the largest NFT marketplace.
- Collection Manager allows zero gas fee NFT minting
- Choose royalties on future sales
- Easy to use and navigate the platform
- Largest collection of NFTs on market
- Mobile app available for iOS
OpenSea Pros & Cons
Pros
Easy to create your own NFTs
Zero gas fees with new Collection Manager feature
Pick royalties up to 10%
iOS mobile app
Cons
Royalties low compared to Rarible
No support for fiat currency such as USD
What is OpenSea?
OpenSea was founded in 2017 and has quickly become the worlds largest NFT marketplace, with offerings from every type of NFT product, and even listings from other NFT marketplaces such as Rarible.
Users can buy and sell anything from a domain name to art from their favorite underground artist. OpenSea has created features that allow users to mint NFTs for free and only take a modest commission on sales, while also expanding their compatibility to a mobile application for iOS and another blockchain network by adding Polygon.
With how easy it is to buy, sell and create on OpenSea it will likely remain a top choice in the quickly growing NFT industry.
Is OpenSea Safe?
OpenSea is safe because it is secured with the power of blockchain.
Like most NFT marketplaces it is also non-custodial, meaning that your NFTS never leave your wallet until they are sold. When a sale occurs, the smart contract you agree to when listing your NFT activates and pulls it from your wallet, in exchange depositing the funds you are owed.
Everything is secured by the blockchain and verifiable.
How to Mint an NFT on OpenSea
It is extremely easy to mint your own NFTs on OpenSea following these steps:
- Visit the OpenSea homepage and click “Create”
- Click “Create a Collection”
- Choose your logo image (featured and banner images are optional)
- Pick a name for your NFT, customize the URL and add a description, category and any social media links you want
- Pick your royalties up to 10%
- Pick the blockchain you want it to be added to (Ethereum or Polygon)
- Pick your payment tokens (ETH, WETH, DAI, USDC)
- Pick your display theme
- Click “Create”
- Verify the transaction with your wallet
- You will then have a collection that you can “Add Items” to
- Pick “Add Item”
- Upload your file up to 100mb
- Pick a name and other required info then add it to your collection
- If you click the item in your collection you can then choose to list it for sale
What Wallets does OpenSea accept?
There are a ton of wallets that you can use with OpenSea, though they all share the commonality that they are Ethereum network compatible. Here is a list of wallets you can use with OpenSea and note that WalletConnect compatible wallets are a very long list that can be found here:
- MetaMask
- Coinbase Wallet
- WalletConnect Wallets (Argent, Crypto.com Wallet)
- TrustWallet
- Portis
- Fortmatic/Magic
- Arkane
- Authereum
- Bitski
- Dapper
- Kaikas
- OperaTouch
- Torus
- WalletLink
Advantages of OpenSea
OpenSea provides a few advantages of users, the first of which being its size, being the largest NFT marketplace means there are more people to see your work or what you are trying to sell. Add in the mobile app for iOS and it means a lot of visibility for your listings.
The biggest advantage of OpenSea is the Collection Manager, which allows you to both mint and sell NFTs with zero gas fees to be paid by you. This means that you can get higher profits for your sales, and it will draw in even more users to the platform as it costs them nothing to create on OpenSea.
Disadvantages of OpenSea
The only disadvantage of OpenSea is that they only allow royalties of up to 10% for artists, though this might not really be a disadvantage as it means secondary sellers can keep more profit for themselves.
The environmental impact of using blockchain for NFTs is being somewhat mitigated as well with their use of the Collection Manager to keep certain transactions off the chain until necessary.
OpenSea Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, OpenSea takes a 2.5% commission fee from all sellers on their platform, which is very good. The other benefit to selling on OpenSea compared to other marketplaces is you can mint NFTs with little to no gas fees, increasing your profit margin.
No, OpenSea does not have its own token like Rarible does with RARI.
You can make money on OpenSea in two ways. You can either mint and sell your own NFTs and make money that way or try to buy and sell other NFTs for a profit. Neither method is guaranteed to result in you making money.
OpenSea uses the Ethereum blockchain for almost all processes, but users now have the option to have their NFTs minted using the Polygon network, and there are no gas fees for buying or selling on the Polygon blockchain.
Yes, OpenSea allows you to mint NFTs for free using their Collection Manager feature, and then you can even sell them without having to pay a gas fee.
The new collection manager feature on OpenSea allows creators to make NFTs without any upfront gas cost, as the NFT isn’t transferred on-chain until the first purchase or transfer is made. OpenSea calls this “lazy minting.” Essentially it unbundles the on-chain issuance of your NFTs from the metadata. If you pay any gas at all it will only be when you NFT sells.
