The NFT marketplace takes another shot at Magic Eden’s dominance
OpenSea recently allowed for Solana NFTs to be purchased and sold on their platform. The multi chain market now allows for creators to build communities on Ethereum, Polygon, Klaytn, and Solana.
A launchpad is a tool that allows a creator to mint NFTs during a primary sale and a new launchpad is now being offered by OpenSea for Solana creators that want to host a mint from start to finish. This is a feature that is already available on Solana platforms Magic Eden and Fractal. A team at OpenSea will guide the creators throughout the process from pre-mint activities to final mint.
The goal of the OpenSea launchpad is to be the best Solana experience for users in that space. OpenSea commented on the new launchpad and the possible new opportunities offered to creators.
“We’re excited to launch and learn with these first drops, and we’re committed to expanding primary drops on OpenSea”
OpenSea managed to get hundreds of millions in investor funds during the bull run of late 2020 to early 2021 resulting in a $13.3Bn valuation. The growth did not come without some issues however as one of the company’s former product managers was charged by the United States Department of Justice for insider trading. During this bear market every aspect of crypto and web3 has taken a hit and the NFT marketplace has also announced a 20% workforce reduction last week as well.
The launchpad is a direct competitive strike at other launchpads such as Magic Eden’s which already has a sizable control of the Solana NFT market. The launchpad began this week with the launch of an NFT project titled “Zoonies”.
Zoonies is described as “a collection of 8888 NFTS on Solana featuring unique characters branded as cute but mutant aliens”. There are plans for an alien themed ecosystem called Planet Zoon with strong branding and innovation being the main focus. Upon looking on the Zoonies website the roadmap states utilities such as Staking, claiming of a free NFT apartment on a 2D metaverse, and a token by the name of $POTION that will mutate the Zoonie.
With the introduction of this launchpad OpenSea adds even more utility to the site as they continue to push towards NFT marketplace dominance. Zoonies was the first NFT project to launch on the OpenSea Launchpad at a mint price of 2.5 SOL (Currently $109.75 USD), but some of the NFT sold on the secondary market are already below that price at 1.97 SOL ($86).
The launch of the NFT has not sold out despite already being a few days old, the collection of 8888 has only seen 5504 minted meaning there is still 38% of the project left to sell.
This can be see as normal however as most projects are having issues selling out in this bear market. Tomorrowland, the popular musical event released an NFT that guarantees the holder access to hard to purchase tickets and the ability to gain free tickets by burning their token. This utility is enticing as the tickets are always highly sought after. The project, which is on Magic Eden’s launchpad service, has only sold 60% of its total as well.
