OpenSea announces migration to Seaport protocol

On Tuesday, OpenSea, the most popular nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, marketplace by trading volume, announced that it was migrating to Seaport. Among many perks, the protocol says it will feature lower gas fees, the ability to make offers on entire collections, removal of new account initialization fees and more user-friendly signature options.

As told by OpenSea, users would pay 35% less for gas fees when transacting on Seaport. Based on data from 2021, it would amount to an estimated $460 million (138,000 ETH) in total savings. In addition, the removal of the setup fee would potentially result in $120 million (35,000 ETH) per year in additive savings.

The year prior, the Ethereum network became periodically congested due to celebrity NFT drops on OpenSea, with users reporting losses due to failed transactions. However, gas prices on the network have stabilized as of late. Average Ether gas prices tracked by YCharts have fallen to $95.86 compared to spikes of hundreds of dollars in 2021. 

OpenSea also teased features such as the ability to purchase many NFTs in a single transaction, making real-time creator fees available to multiple recipients, and defining fees on-chain on a per-item basis. Seaport listings have the same basic structure as previous ones while its developers worked in Assembly to optimize transaction efficiency.

OpenSea said that it does not control or operate the Seaport protocol and merely builds on top of it. The firm also stated that it's still "hiring across the board" in concluding comments. This is in contrast with steep rounds of layoffs announced by multiple cryptocurrency firms, including most recently BlockFi and Coinbase.