Is OpenSea Web3?

The Sad Truth About OpenSea

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Photo by Charles Forerunner on Unsplash

OpenSea is Web2

OpenSea is the largest NFT marketplace in the world. And despite being the entry point to NFTs, they’re not really a Web3 company.

The only Web3 part of OpenSea is paying expensive gas fees.

Governed by Stock Not Tokens

Most Web3 platforms use a governance token. This accomplishes 3 things.

• Users own upside - if the people who love the platform can profit from using it, they’ll be more excited to contribute.

• Making decisions -The community can make collective decisions by voting on changes to the platform. 

• Incentive structure - developers can incentivize certain behavior by offering tokens. 

OpenSea doesn’t have a token. They’ve publicly stated they’re not working on one. And worst of all? They’re trying to go public.

Instead of being owned and operated by users, it will be controlled by shareholders. The same leadership structure that controls all Web2 companies like Facebook and YouTube.

Why This Is Wrong

The problem with the legacy financial system is that it “protects” ordinary investors from the best opportunities.

People like you and me aren’t allowed to invest in the next Amazon or Facebook when they’re first starting out. We can only invest after the stock price has already gone to the moon. Aka after they go public.

To invest at the early stage, you need to be an accredited investor. This is a watered-down way of saying rich. You need one of the two following requirements to become an accredited investor:

• Net worth above $1million (not including your home)

• Annual income above $200k for at least 2 years

The reason people love crypto so much is because it allows anyone to invest at the earliest stage. For example, the guy that bought $SHIB when it first launched. That investment is now worth BILLIONS.

That will never happen in the traditional economy. 

OpenSea is literally built with Web3 tech. And yet, the company turns its back on Web3 values.

Who Profits?

By following the traditional stock model, one group of people will profit. Wealthy accredited investors.

Not the users. Not the artists. In many cases, not even the employees who wrote the code.

I don’t blame the founders. By going this route, they stand to gain the most. It’s not that they’re bad people. They’re not. They’re brilliant and hard-working.

But their money comes before their mission.

Gradual Decentralization 

OpenSea did great work for the industry. They made it easy and convenient to trade NFTs. But they’re not a decentralized organization.

Our goal for this industry is maximum decentralization. No all-corrupting power. But that doesn’t happen overnight.

It’s a slow process. It’ll take years. But it will be worth it. We just have to keep building.

Web3 & Freedom

We can learn a thing or two from history. No large-scale positive change happened quickly.

It happens slowly but surely. 

African-Americans were slaves until 1865. Even then, they were heavily discriminated against until the civil rights movement. And that took an additional 100 years.

Think about this. Some old people today were alive in a time when African-Americans weren’t recognized as full human beings.

Yeah, we’ve come a long way.

These things don’t happen in a few days. Only after years of dedication and fighting the good fight.

Final Thoughts

Decentralization is appealing because it stops unpopular decisions.

If you’ve ever used the Internet, you know that feeling. When a platform you love makes a stupid decision. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

The biggest injustice is that the shareholders profit from your activity. YouTube, Facebook, TikTok etc. didn’t create billions of dollars of value. We did. 

But we never had the chance to capture the upside because we’re not accredited investors.

OpenSea follows in the footsteps of big tech. The profiteering middleman. Extracting as much value as humanly possible.

Let us imagine a brighter future. A future where users and creators capture the value they create.