OpenSea, NFT’s buying and selling platform, has announced that it will only support Ethereum’s Proof of Stake chain once the merger is complete. It also revealed that its Seaport protocol is now compatible with Polygon.
What is Opensea and the Seaport protocol?
OpenSea is a decentralized platform for buying and selling non-fungible tokens (NFT). As a reminder, an NFT is a unique token that is not equivalent to any other. Its value can vary, unlike a bitcoin whose value is always equivalent to another bitcoin for example. NFTs are digital objects that can be exchanged like cryptocurrencies, and that represent works or other elements, such as domain names for example.
OpenSea allows you to sell existing NFT, but also to create your own non-fungible token very easily. The NFTs offered are largely derived from the Ethereum blockchain (ETH), which is currently the leader in this field. But OpenSea is open to other projects, like Tezos (XTZ) for example, or Polygon (MATIC).
Seaport protocol, a new concept
Users of the Opensea platform know very well that one of the major problems of this marketplace remains its transaction fees. First of all, because they are historically linked to those of the Ethereum network on which it operates. But also, because their management was until now taken care of by the Wyvern protocol, considered not very efficient. In particular, because the latter did not take into account certain specificities linked to the smart contract functions requested. Not all operations are equally gas-intensive.
That’s why the platform will migrate from Wyvern to Seaport.
OpenSea is migrating to Seaport, a new web3 market protocol designed to buy and sell NFTs safely and efficiently. Seaport is a new concept – it’s open source, inherently decentralized, and a modern foundation that will help us (and all the teams using it) create and release new features faster.
Seaport and Polygon, users will be able to take advantage of several features
Opensea announced Polygon compatibility in their open source web3 marketplace protocol Seaport. They also revealed that they will support Klaytn and other EVM-enabled channels in the coming months.
Users will be able to take advantage of several features through Polygon support. These include no quote thresholds, the ability to trade in MATIC, increased initiator fees, bulk transfers, and auctions in English and Dutch. The minimum bid amount is now 1 dollar, compared to 5 dollars previously.
Opensea and the ethereum merge: preparing for the impending transition
The Ethereum blockchain is ready to make the long-awaited transition from its current proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) mining consensus. The merge date is officially scheduled for September 15-16 after the successful final integration of the Goerli test network into the Beacon chain on August 11. Currently, miners can create new Ether (ETH) by pledging a huge amount of computing power.
After the merge, however, network participants, called validators, will have to commit large amounts of pre-existing ETH to validate blocks, creating more ETH and earning rewards.
NFT Market OpenSea has announced that it will only support Ethereum’s proof-of-stake version once the merge is complete. On September 1, the company tweeted that it was “committed to exclusively supporting NFT on the updated Ethereum PoS blockchain.” It also prepared for the impending transition to proof-of-stake to ensure the process runs smoothly.
Several entities in the crypto space have announced plans to support only the PoS version of Ethereum, including Circle and Chainlink.
