In January this year, something in the NFT space freaked out everyone. NFTs simply started to disappear. Services like MetaMask and Twitter were all of sudden not able to properly display NFTs even though users had clear records showing ownership. It was clear at the time the distributed decentralized technology stack that helps to power these digital collectibles was failing in some way.
It turned out that the issue was associated with OpenSea, a huge NFT marketplace that has dominated the industry in recent months. According to reports, a database outage at OpenSea caused these anomalies. This also underlined just how influential OpenSea has become in the NFT space. 2021 has been the year of NFTs.
These collectibles have surged to new heights never seen before. And there is no doubt that the central broker for NFTs right now is OpenSea. It's hard to imagine that there will ever be another company in the future that reaches these heights. OpenSea has become so entangled in the NFT market that it plays many roles, including an enforcement capacity for NFT rules.
Many users would call OpenSea if they have issues with their collectibles even in the case where the NFTs were issued by third parties. OpenSea can even block a sale if both parties in the transaction have already agreed to it. This symbolizes the growing power of the marketplace experts in this industry.
Besides, OpenSea is also allowing users to mint tokens directly on the platform. But should you decide to mint the collectibles elsewhere, it's often best to sell them here. We have seen so many times before cases where NFTs found their way to OpenSea even if they were minted somewhere else.
The success of OpenSea is not a surprise seeing that it was one of the key pioneers in this industry. The platform simply hopes to provide a simple centralized service that is built on a more complex decentralized ecosystem.
It's the same thing platforms like Coinbase do and they went on to become multi billion-dollar companies. This is not to say that OpenSea is headed there. But the similarities are indeed striking. The platform is also quite ambitious. In fact, according to one company representative, the marketplace is betting on widespread blockchain adoption.
He argues that it is likely in the future everything we own as humans will be accounted for in the blockchain. OpenSea wants to be at the center of that. In essence, while the platform is making its name in the NFT space, it is looking forward to a future where more assets can be sold and bought the way NFTs are.
But some experts wonder if indeed OpenSea will be able to maintain its hold in the market. After all, not all pioneering companies in tech go on to become big. AOL and Netscape are good examples. It will be quite interesting to see how the platform will respond once it starts getting real competition from other new companies.
