NFTs

OpenSea raises $300m in funding to reinforce its market-leading position

NFT marketplace OpenSea has raised $300m in Series C funding in a bid to “become the core destination for new open digital economies to thrive”.

In a blog post, OpenSea revealed the round was led by Paradigm and Coatue alongside further participation from new and existing investors, and raises the total valuation of OpenSea to an impressive $13.3 billion.

In line with its vision of “building the world’s friendliest and most trusted NFT marketplace”, the investment will be used to accelerate product development, improve customer support and safety on the platform, invest in the wider NFT and Web3 community and expand its team further.

 

Outlining a focus on lowering the barriers to entry for NFTs, OpenSea will begin by introducing features and ‘simplified flows’ that can remove the complexities behind blockchain and NFTs.

In addition, it will focus on “accelerating multi-chain support” and bringing improvements to users with “better tools, analytics, and presentation” of NFTs.

OpenSea is also expanding efforts involving “customer support, trust and safety” alongside “site stability and integrity”.

The improvements include product and technical investments to bring more power to its users along with significant investments in in-person customer support operations.

To help kickstart the process, OpenSea has added Shiva Rajaraman, formerly of Meta and YouTube, as its new VP of Product.

In addition, having already scaled its customer support and trust and safety teams to more than 60 people throughout 2021, OpenSea now expects to more than double this by the end of 2022.

However, despite current efforts, sub-par customer support and lack of reliable infrastructure have both remained a major gripe within the NFT community.

Users have been quick to note that OpenSea’s ambitions within a ‘web3’ environment are misaligned thanks to its ownership structure and lack of a native utility token, which many have called for to re-establish trust and belief in its long-standing market dominance.

Sean Dickens

An avid advocate of DeFi, Sean has been in the industry since 2017, studying the latest trends writing about cryptocurrencies. He studied Journalism and Media at Birkbeck University and now writes for Coin Rivet while being an active member of various communities in the crypto space - particularly NFTs.

Disqus Comments Loading...

Recent Posts

The surge of Bitcoin NFTs: Everything you should know about Bitcoin ordinals

From digital art to real-estate assets, NFTs have become a significant attraction for investors who…

3 weeks ago

MEXC Partners with Aptos to Launch Events Featuring a 1.5 Million USDT Prize Pool

Singapore, Singapore, 21st October 2024, Chainwire

4 weeks ago