The largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, now offers art on seven blockchains with the addition of Avalanche, making Avalanche NFTs available on its platform.
Undoubtedly, NFT activity continues to be sluggish, and as a result, some major players in the NFT space have joined forces to expand their reach. The latest in the growing list is the world’s largest marketplace, OpenSea, which announced that it had added Avalanche NFTs to its online marketplace.
The latest to do so is OpenSea, which has launched natively on the layer-1 blockchain, Avalanche. It brings the total number of blockchains that OpenSea supports to seven, including Ethereum, Polygon, Klaytn, Solana, Optimism, and Arbitrum.
“The future of Web3 is multichain, and it’s always been our goal to offer the best selection and connect people with projects and creators across the chains they prefer,” said Shiva Rajaraman, vice president of product at OpenSea. Incidentally, OpenSea saw roughly $350 million in total Ethereum NFT volume traded in September.
Avalanche NFT Now on OpenSea
OpenSea will operate on Avalanche alongside other platforms like NFTrade and some Avalanche-focused marketplaces like Joepegs and Kalao. Moreover, OpenSea users would benefit since they can now settle NFT transactions faster and with low fees.
“We listen to our community, and part of our community really wanted to have OpenSea,” John Wu, president of Ava Labs, said. “We have a budding and vibrant creator and NFT community, and they wanted OpenSea as a choice.”
Avalanche is an open-source network that has a native token, AVAX, and three different blockchains. One of these is the C-Chain, optimized for Ethereum compatibility and smart contracts, which NFTs use.
OpenSea’s announcement on Tuesday sat well with Avalanche NFT fans. However, it remains to be seen whether the boosted visibility will reinforce its NFT economy. As far as Avalanche NFTs go, these have barely made a dent in the market.
Per CryptoSlam data, the blockchain saw roughly $2.4 million in total NFT volume traded in September, spanning about 25,000 transactions and only 4,488 buyers. For comparison purposes, Solana, launched around the same time as Avalanche, saw nearly $130 million in total NFT volume traded last month, spanning 3 million transactions and 143,000 buyers. That shows Solana drew in 193% more NFT-related funds and 187% more users than Avalanche in September alone.
OpenSea will feature all Avalanche NFTs, with more rolling out over time. Moreover, according to Wu, Avalanche is hard at work with several Web2 business and consumer brands and sports teams. These enterprises unanimously wanted OpenSea on Avalanche.
“They want to know there is a chain that’s scalable because [Web2] is so much bigger than Web3. They want a chain that can handle massive amounts of activity from its users,” Wu said. “These brands are far more comfortable working with OpenSea.”
Up to this point, OpenSea has generated over $20 billion in volume traded across roughly 80 million NFTs. And when the subsector exploded in popularity in January, the platform hit a $13.3 billion valuation.
On Avalanche’s part, CryptoSlam data shows it is the seventh-largest blockchain in NFT sales volume, with about $404.6 million in cumulative sales.
“The whole NFT market is down, and it’s down a lot,” Wu said. “But if you break down the NFT market [ … ] a lot of the fluff is gone. What is starting to pick up is a new category of utility and fan engagement, along [with] other categories outside of the collectible world.”
Ava Labs’ Business Development Lead, Dominic Carbonaro, is bullish about Avalanche’s future. He believes its NFT creators are barely getting started.
“Avalanche’s NFT community has a unique identity and passion for experimenting with both the art and applications of NFTs,” Carbonaro said in a statement. “Creators here are still just scratching the surface.”
Whether OpenSea’s entry and support for the blockchain help Avalanche “scratch the surface” or not remains to be seen. Who knows, perhaps OpenSea can send Avalanche NFTs to the big leagues, or maybe not.
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