Since its establishment in 2017, OpenSea has been the core platform of the NFT market, providing basic functions such as minting, trading, and auctioning, and gradually expanding to token trading, cross-chain interactions, and AI tools.
As one of the earliest comprehensive NFT trading platforms, OpenSea not only carries most of the NFT traffic but also forms an early reference framework in terms of fee models and market rules. Its data performance is regarded as an important indicator for observing the trend of NFT development.
Currently, the NFT market's heat has significantly cooled. In early 2025, OpenSea's monthly trading volume was about 195 million USD, a reduction of approximately 96% compared to the peak of nearly 5 billion USD in early 2022.
Against the backdrop of declining liquidity and user activity, OpenSea will announce the TGE details of its native token SEA in early October 2025. This move not only marks a new stage in the platform's development but is also seen as an important attempt to rebuild user stickiness and market vitality through tokenization incentives during the downturn.
In the following text, CoinW Research Institute will analyze the final incentive mechanism and on-chain data performance of OpenSea before TGE.
1. Pre-TGE incentive plan
1.1 Details of the final reward activity
Starting from September 15, OpenSea will initiate the final reward phase, injecting 50% of all platform trading fees into the reward pool, including a 1% fee for NFT transactions and a 0.85% fee for token transactions.
This means that the platform's income is directly linked to the size of the reward pool. The more active the trading, the higher the potential earnings distributed to users. Meanwhile, the official has additionally invested an equivalent of 1 million US dollars in Optimism (OP) and Arbitrum (ARB) into the vault.
In terms of specific participation methods, a treasure chest upgrade mechanism is adopted. Users start from level 1 chests and accumulate experience points through cross-chain trading, daily tasks, and supply collection, with the highest level being 12. The higher the level, the larger the reward share.
Through the design of task-based and graded systems, the platform can quickly amplify trading and community activity in a short period. This incentive activity can enhance early liquidity on one hand and strengthen users' long-term expectations for token distribution on the other.
1.2 Other significant updates before TGE
Alongside the launch of the final reward plan, OpenSea has also recently undertaken a series of strategic layouts and product updates in preparation for the upcoming token issuance.
① Acquisition of Rally and focus on trading features
In July, OpenSea completed the acquisition of the mobile wallet company Rally, marking its transformation from a single NFT market to a comprehensive on-chain asset trading platform. This acquisition brought more complete token trading tools, including portfolio tracking, K-line charts, and faster price updates.
OpenSea stated that these updates are part of an overall strategy, with the future goal of allowing users to simultaneously complete NFT and token transactions on the platform, gradually building a one-stop entry for on-chain assets.
② Launch of mobile applications and AI tools
To support its expansion strategy, OpenSea launched a new mobile application in early September, allowing users to manage wallets and asset portfolios in a single interface.
The mobile application also integrates AI-driven portfolio analysis and trading assistance tools, which can provide real-time market data, strategy suggestions, and asset insights, helping novices lower operational barriers and providing deeper data support for professional traders.
③ Create flagship NFT series
OpenSea also announced a budget of over 1 million USD for its flagship NFT series to acquire NFT works with historical significance and cultural value.
As of now, the acquired collections include CryptoPunk #5273, Pudgy Penguin #1647, Memories of Qilin #780, Chromie Squiggle, and Bored Ape Yacht Club #1997. This series is both a preservation of Web3 cultural heritage and a long-term commitment released by the platform during a downturn.
2. On-chain data of the platform
2.1 User participation status
Since the launch of the reward activity, OpenSea's platform activity has indeed rebounded, but the overall participating group still mainly consists of existing NFT users and airdrop participants, failing to attract a significant number of new users. A large number of loyal users are actively accumulating points (XP) through trading and tasks, aiming to obtain a larger share of rewards when the SEA token is issued.
From the task completion situation, most active users have completed at least one round of tasks and raised their treasure chest levels to 7-9 during the mid-activity period.
From the XP data distribution, it can be more intuitively observed that approximately 698,400 wallets have accumulated XP, with a total score exceeding 2.1 billion. The average is about 3,052 XP per wallet, with a median of about 1,750 XP.
In terms of distribution structure, users with lower scores account for the absolute majority, with 28.5% of users having scores below 500 XP. This indicates that most users only engage in basic tasks or light interactions, and the truly deeply participating group is relatively limited.
Unlike the large-scale brushing surge caused by Blur's airdrop in previous years, this event did not trigger massive volume manipulation. On one hand, this is due to OpenSea linking the reward mechanism to long-term loyalty, curbing short-term arbitrage behaviors. On the other hand, the overall NFT market is sluggish, speculative funds remain cautious, and users prefer to complete small, frequent tasks.
2.2 On-chain trading volume
From the on-chain data, OpenSea still occupies about 62% of the market share. Since OpenSea launched the final TGE pre-incentive activity, the platform's trading volume has seen some rebound, but the overall scale is limited, and there has not been a significant breakthrough.
To ensure that the TGE can generate strong momentum, OpenSea still needs to transform this limited rebound into more scalable and sustainable trading growth and user participation.
From the daily active address data, after OpenSea announced the incentive activity on September 15, it welcomed the peak in nearly three months on September 16, with daily active addresses reaching 57,536. In contrast, the second-ranked Blur had only 730 daily active addresses that day, showing a significant gap.
However, this peak did not continue, and the enthusiasm quickly receded after the event started. Currently, OpenSea's daily active addresses have dropped to around 5,000.
3. Main focus of SEA tokens
3.1 Benefit competition under airdrop rewards
As a leader in the NFT field, the potential value of its token airdrop has sparked countless imaginations among users. In fact, since early 2025 when the platform hinted at issuing tokens, many users have actively engaged in trading and interactions in hopes of obtaining qualifications for future airdrops.
With the launch of the final reward phase, user participation enthusiasm is being released in a concentrated manner. Many users are upgrading their treasure chest levels by completing tasks, waiting for the formally revealed distribution plan. However, behind this enthusiasm, participants also have to face hidden costs, including transaction gas fees, handling fees, etc.
On the other hand, OpenSea's pre-TGE activity adopts a seasonal competition mechanism. The first phase will continue until mid-October, and more seasons will be held in the future. This airdrop activity reflects the psychological game between the platform and the market, where loyal users hope to gain higher weight through long-term interactions, while short-term arbitrageurs are looking for low-cost volume manipulation.
OpenSea has introduced graded tasks in its mechanism design, aiming to curb short-term speculative behavior. However, this also raises the participation threshold for real users. A deeper risk is that if later reward distribution is not transparent or excessively biased, it could trigger a crisis of user trust and further weaken the platform's cohesion during downturns.
3.2 Reconstruction of OpenSea's value chain
The launch of SEA marks OpenSea's attempt to reconstruct its value chain. Its core role is to connect the platform's fee distribution, user incentives, and product matrix into a closed-loop mechanism.
Users earn SEA tokens as rewards in transactions and can then use the tokens to offset fees, thereby continuously reinforcing users' motivation to use the platform in the cycle of trading, incentives, and re-trading. Therefore, SEA is no longer just a subsidy but an incentive mechanism embedded in the trading cycle to promote user retention and activity.
However, this shift also breaks OpenSea's low-fee positioning. Since OS2 was launched in May 2025, its fee has only been 0.5%, lower than competitors like Blur, and is regarded as a competitive pricing system.
However, in order to expand the prize pool, its NFT and token fees have been raised to 1% and 0.85%, which significantly increases user costs during the market downturn. However, whether users will continue to bear higher costs later depends on whether they can obtain more practical returns through SEA.
In the long run, SEA's true test is whether it can really activate the currently sluggish NFT market through adjustments to the revenue mechanism and ecological linkage, reshaping OpenSea's user stickiness and market discourse power. Otherwise, the current price increase strategy will only accelerate user loss.
This also means that the evaluation of SEA's value is not limited to competition between NFT platforms but is related to whether OpenSea can reconstruct its value chain during market downturns and become a new engine driving the recovery of the NFT market.
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