OpenSea NFT Marketplace Welcomes Arbitrum Support to Onboard New Collections

The nonfungible token secondary marketplace OpenSea will launch support for the Arbitrum layer and new NFT projects on Sept. 21, 2022.

OpenSea will soon support popular collections like Smolverse, the GMX Blueberry Club, and Diamond Pepes by dopex_io. Arbitrum NFT support will go live today on OpenSea, where creators are advised to set their creator fees before any transactions occur.

Following OpenSea’s announcement, chief marketing officer Andrew Saunders tweeted, “In honor of @opensea joining the @arbitrum ecosystem, we’re playing Yacht Rock all day and all night! Party on Arbinuats.”

OpenSea currently supports NFTs on the Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana blockchains.

Arbitrum One is a permissionless Ethereum layer-2 rollup that supports Ethereum’s smart contract capabilities and serves as an entry point into the Arbitrum ecosystem. A rollup is a layer-two scaling solution for Ethereum that can run decentralized applications, host NFTs, and deploy smart contracts, all for a lower gas fee than the main Ethereum chain. Being “permissionless” means anyone can deploy a smart contract on the rollup.

According to the project’s development documents, Arbitrum One is currently running in mainnet beta, meaning that while the rollup operates a full-feature set, the development team can make any changes and pause the network when necessary.

Will OpenSea keep succeeding?

According to the Arbitrum One portal, there are 22 live NFT projects on Arbitrum that will be listed on OpenSea. In April 2022, analytics firm Nansen confirmed a 205% year-on-year growth in Arbitrum NFT users. In the same period, the top 20 wallets saw a 10,000% return on investment.

OpenSea’s commercial success in hosting the NFTs will require leveraging its one million-plus user base in a similar way to how Treasure Marketplace succeeded in building a community around its NFTs, encouraging participation by offering free mints. OpenSea also needs to ensure that it provides enough search and filter options, considering that Arbitrum will be the fourth blockchain to be listed on its marketplace. A multi-chain wallet could also streamline the process for buyers and sellers.

But it may take some time, considering that OpenSea’s ETH trading volumes still dwarf volumes on Polygon and Solana, according to data from DappRadar. At press time, all-time ETH trading volumes on OpenSea totaled roughly $33 billion, while trading volumes on Polygon and Solana are $770.3 million and $51.4 million, respectively.

Key user benefits of multi-chain marketplaces

The advantage of having a multi-chain NFT marketplace is that there is a possibility of users trading NFTs across different blockchains, enhancing the NFTs’ liquidity and improving their value. Users can also choose which blockchain best suits their budgets with respect to minting fees and not be restricted to Ethereum, where gas fees have reached values of $80 and beyond.

Earlier this year, Solana NFT marketplace Magic Eden started integrating ETH-based NFTs to pioneer mass adoption and simplify the process of launching a new collection.