OpenSea chief says he is ready to consider offers to sell the marketplace

What’s new? Devin Finzer, CEO and co-founder of the OpenSea NFT marketplace, has said in an interview with DL News that the company is open to mergers and acquisitions, including its own sale. “We think that if the right partnership comes along, then that’s something we should certainly consider,” the top executive explained. He added, however, that OpenSea is not currently actively looking for a buyer or planning a sale.

Material by DL News

What else is known? At its peak, OpenSea held 90% of the market for non-fungible tokens, but by the beginning of 2024, its monthly trading volume had fallen by more than 97% compared to the record set on January 1, 2022 ($4,96 billion), according to the Dune platform.

The NFT marketplace Blur, which launched in October 2022, now leads the NFT market. The platform regularly conducts airdrops of the native token BLUR to stimulate trading activity. According to Dune, while OpenSea still has more users, Blur’s weekly trading volume is nearly five times larger. The Blur team also launched the Blast protocol on November 21 of last year, and users have since invested $1,3 billion in it.

Finzer said he is indifferent to Blur’s performance and is focused on building a brand “that keeps users safe by delisting any fraudulent or problematic collections.” He also hinted that Blur is being superficial about legal compliance to save money.

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In addition, Finzer confirmed that the company cut its staff by 50% last November, adding that the layoffs were not related to the deteriorating financial situation. He said the “restructuring that we did was really oriented around adjusting the team composition” and was aimed at improving its performance.

Previously, Finzer announced an upgrade to the OpenSea interface, which will result in the categorization of tokens by usage scenarios.

In January, former OpenSea product head Nathaniel Chastain appealed his prison sentence on insider trading charges. He claimed that information about upcoming collection postings on the OpenSea homepage had no commercial value.