How will OpenSea protect the NFT community after a tarnished 2022?
- OpenSea has introduced a three-hour holding period to identify fraudulent transactions.
- Despite challenges from new platforms, OpenSea continued its dominance in the sector.
Open seathe world’s largest non-functional token [NFT] marketplace, has taken steps to protect users from hacking incidents on its platform. In a Twitter post on 2 February, OpenSea writes introduced a grace period in which sellers will be prevented from accepting offers for three hours after a presumed sale.
Introducing OpenSea’s 3-hour holding period
To reduce theft-related risk, sellers will be prevented from accepting offers on certain items for 3 hours after certain transfers and sales. But don’t worry – with @DelegateCashhot<>cold wallet transfers will not be affected@nanzbonanz📽🧵 pic.twitter.com/zjKYP7oXK4
— OpenSea (@opensea) February 2, 2023
OpenSea stated that the additional time would help the community detect fraudulent activity and determine the authenticity of the transferred items.
Contaminated past
OpenSea has faced serious concerns over the platform’s security in the past. In February 2022, it was at the center of one of the largest exploits in the NFT ecosystem. During the exploit, $1.7 million worth of NFTs were stolen from users’ wallets
OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer acknowledged the breach and stated that users fell victim to a phishing attack where they were tricked into signing a fake contract.
Another update: over the past few hours we’ve spoken to dozens of people, teams and projects across the NFT space.
— Devin Finzer (dfinzer.eth) (@dfinzer) 20 February 2022
In less than three months, the market place was affected another hack when the discord channel was compromised. The hackers posted a fake YouTube collaboration news that included a link to a phishing website.
Do not click on links in our Discord.
We are continuing to investigate this situation and will share information as we have it.
— OpenSea Support (@opensea_support) 6 May 2022
OpenSea dominance on the trade front continues
OpenSea started 2023 on a pleasant note with significant growth in key indicators, per Token Terminal data. NFT trading volume on the platform has increased by 64% over the past 30 days, while investors have increased revenue gains of over 40% over the same period.
Source: Token Terminal
The growth in royalties paid to creators was impressive, which could entice more enthusiasts to enter the platform and create their NFTs. The calculation almost doubled in the last month.
Source: Token Terminal
More competition in the coming days?
Although it is an established fact that OpenSea is the largest and most popular platform in the NFT marketplace ecosystem, it has seen its share of the pie reduced by another emerging platform, Obscurity.
Also, data from Dune Analytics revealed that OpenSea accounted for 45% of the total volume across all NFT marketplaces. On the other hand, the three-month-old Blur marketplace occupied 37%.
