How will OpenSea safeguard the NFT community after a tainted 2022?

• OpenSea has introduced a three-hour hold period to identify fraudulent transactions.
• Despite challenges by emerging platforms, OpenSea continued its dominance in the sector.

OpenSea, the world’s largest Non-Fungible Token [NFT] marketplace, has taken steps to safeguard users from hacking incidents on its platform. In a Twitter post on 2 February, OpenSea introduced a grace period wherein sellers will be prevented from accepting offers for three hours after a supposed sale.

Introducing OpenSea’s 3hr Hold Period

To mitigate theft-related risk, sellers will be prevented from accepting offers on certain items for 3 hours after some transfers and sales. But don’t worry–with @DelegateCash, hot<>cold wallet transfers won't be affected@nanzbonanz📽🧵 pic.twitter.com/zjKYP7oXK4

— OpenSea (@opensea) February 2, 2023

OpenSea stated that the extra time would help the community detect fraudulent activity and ascertain the authenticity of the transferred items.

Befouled 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 biggest 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 deceived into signing a fake contract.

Another update: over the last few hours we’ve talked to dozens of people, teams, and projects across the NFT space. https://t.co/fB5r3cMA1r

— Devin Finzer (dfinzer.eth) (@dfinzer) February 20, 2022

In less than three months, the marketplace was hit by another hack when its discord channel was compromised. The hackers posted a fake YouTube collaboration news that included a link to a phishing site. 

Do not click links in our Discord.

We are continuing to investigate this situation and will share information as we have it. https://t.co/jgtHcXifer

— OpenSea Support (@opensea_support) May 6, 2022

OpenSea dominance on trading front continues

OpenSea started its 2023 on a pleasant note with appreciable growth in key performance indicators, per data from Token Terminal. NFT trading volume on the platform shot by 64% over the last 30 days while the investors mopped up revenue gains of over 40% in the same period. 

Source: Token Terminal

The growth in royalties paid to the creators was impressive, which could entice more enthusiasts to come onto the platform and mint their NFTs. The metric almost doubled in the last one month. 

Source: Token Terminal

More competition in the days to come?

While it’s an established fact that OpenSea is the biggest and most popular platform in the NFT marketplace ecosystem, it has seen its share of pie reduced by another emerging platform, Blur. 

Moreover, 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%.