After several months of evaluation, Seaport, the new protocol of the OpenSea non-fungible tokens (NFTs) platform, will welcome the Polygon (MATIC) sidechain. This will allow OpenSea users to settle their transactions in MATIC tokens. According to the company, new EVM-enabled blockchains will also be added in the coming months.
Polygon docks with OpenSea’s Seaport
OpenSea, the largest marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) by volume, has announced that its Seaport protocol will now integrate Polygon as well as MATIC token payments.
“Starting today, we will begin using Seaport for all new listings and offers on Polygon! We’re excited to start using Seaport on multiple blockchains to enhance everyone’s experience on OpenSea.”
Introduced in June, the Seaport protocol was rolled out on OpenSea to bring a host of improvements for users, including a significant reduction in transaction fees, which is estimated to save approximately $460 million annually.
The protocol, which is completely open source, will now welcome Polygon to increase its offer after several months of evaluation. According to the OpenSea press release, Klaytn and other blockchains compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) will be added in the coming months.
As previously highlighted, payment in MATIC tokens will now be possible on OpenSea:
“As part of the move to Seaport, OpenSea now supports the use of $MATIC, Polygon’s native token, as a payment option. Anyone transacting on Polygon using OpenSea will now have to pay their own gas fees to transact using $MATIC.”
NFTs in bad shape
Our colleagues at Fortune reported just a few days ago a significant drop in the total amount of transactions on the OpenSea platform: 99% less volume over 4 months.
Also, while the platform processed the equivalent of 2.7 billion dollars of transactions on May 1st, it has only processed 80 million over the last 7 days according to DappRadar data. Obviously, the drop in the volume processed and the massive drop in the floor prices of the different collections is to be put in relation with the bear market.
Thus, the 2 most popular collections, the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and the CryptoPunks, have seen their floor price drop by 53% and 19% respectively compared to their highest price (ATH) reached this year.
However, OpenSea has deemed this method of calculation inadequate and prefers to look at the volume of transactions, which has fallen by 62% over the same period. However, the company prefers to take the long view and is confident in these troubled times in the market:
“We play the long game because we see what is possible, so we are not so concerned about short-term volatility. We’ve always expected there to be froth, hype and deflation as the community and use cases evolve […].”
