【OpenSea Avengers】 From NFT King to being bled dry by Blur, can it rely on $SEA for a comeback?
How did the once-mighty OpenSea, valued at 13.3 billion dollars, end up like this today?
In 2017, two programmers, Devin and Alex, were working on a crazy idea of "sharing Wi-Fi with cryptocurrency," but they were led into the NFT pit by CryptoKitties. OpenSea was born in 2018, survived three years of bear market, and finally became a legend during the NFT bull market in 2021 —
Monthly trading volume of 5 billion dollars, capturing 95% market share
Valuation of 13.3 billion dollars, top VCs like a16z scrambling to throw money
The only designated exchange in the NFT space, with BAYC and Azuki all trading on it
...and then got robbed!
🩸 Blur's "Vampire Attack": A textbook-level hijacking
At the end of 2022, Blur entered the battlefield with a "zero fees + token incentives" combo, directly hitting OpenSea's Achilles' heel:
1️⃣ Trading mining: $BLUR given for each transaction, professional hunters ecstatic
2️⃣ Order rewards: Earning tokens just by placing bids
3️⃣ Airdrop bombardment: The first batch of airdrops averaged 5000 dollars each
The result?
OpenSea's market share plummeted from 95% to less than 30%
Core trading users collectively defected
Valuation halved again and again
💊 OpenSea's three-step self-rescue
First move: Layoffs for survival
Cutting 50% of staff, even the CPO was optimized (no Web3 giants could escape the graduation tide)
Second move: Abandon IPO
Originally planned for a U.S. stock market listing, but changed course under community criticism: "We want to All in Web3!"
Third move: The ultimate weapon — $SEA token
Airdrop binding to old user sentiment
Multi-chain trading mining to counter Blur
DAO governance with grand plans
🚀 Can $SEA help OpenSea reclaim its throne?
✅ Advantages
70 million old user base
Real multi-chain support (Blur is still ETH exclusive)
Backed by VC supergroups (a16z, Paradigm, etc.)
❌ Hidden dangers
Airdrop rules too complicated, retail investors can't keep up
Token economic model not disclosed (could it be another VC harvesting scheme?)
The overall NFT market is cooling down, making rescue extremely difficult
