OpenSea: A Marketplace for Non-Fungible Assets

The CryptoKitty craze brought some attention to the world of non-fungible tokens, but what else is possible for this type of crypto asset?

OpenSea co-founders Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah want to focus on growing this new space, and their platform, which is like an Ebay for crypto assets, allows users to buy and sell non-fungible assets of any kind.

Listen to find out how users can interact with the OpenSea marketplace and learn about some of the exciting potential use cases in the future of non-fungible assets.

##Non-fungible assets

Crypto began with currencies, so there has been a lot of focus around tokens and exchanges, but the spectrum of things that you can put on the blockchain is much broader.

Crypto goods and collectibles are a new class of asset backed by the blockchain and owned in the same way users own cryptocurrencies.

A non-fungible asset is a unique item. In the digital world, it could be a game item or a ticket, or it could represent something in the real world like real estate or artwork.

##OpenSea is like an ebay for crypto assets

With the existence of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) comes the opportunity for an open marketplace where people can buy and sell them.

CryptoKitties was the first project that pioneered this model--the items themselves were backed by the blockchain, but the user experience was controlled by a company.

OpenSea is a decentralized marketplace for NFTs. Most of its current users have non-fungible assets they want to sell, possibly a digital item from a game, or they’re browsing and they want to be able to buy an item to use in a game.

The process is simple and everything happens atomically, meaning there’s no risk of the seller not receiving their payment or the buyer not receiving their item. It may sound like an exchange, but it’s been designed to look and feel like a marketplace.

##Future use cases for non-fungible tokens

An obvious use case for NFTs is for digital gaming items, which is what the majority of OpenSea’s user base is focused on right now.

But NFTs are not limited to use in gaming, and OpenSea is a platform that can be utilized to buy and sell all kinds of non-fungible assets. The potential market is massive--about $15 billion for virtual goods--with only a tiny portion of it being currently explored.

The market expands beyond the virtual gaming community to items like tickets, domain names, and tokenized physical assets, with the potential to achieve liquidity across a variety of different asset classes.

Key takeaways:

Scarce digital collectibles, known as non-fungible assets are one of the exciting use cases enabled by blockchains;
OpenSea is the first and largest marketplace for crypto goods, like an Ebay for crypto assets;
Although usability and adoption are early, there is a lot of potential for non-fungible assets to be one of the killer use cases for crypto.