In recent days, the NFT market has faced a dramatic decline in NFT values. This is partly due to the general trend of the crypto market, but there is another factor.
NFT Market Current Issue: Opensea
The recovering cryptocurrency market, particularly exemplified by the performance of the Kaito Genesis NFT Collection and Pudgy Penguins over the past week, experienced a disruption following the announcement of the Opensea Airdrop. Specifically, the program enables users to accumulate Opensea XP, which functions as a metric for the subsequent distribution of $SEA airdrop tokens.
Learn more: What is Opensea?
- Create and Maintain Competitive Listings: Listing NFTs at or near the floor price of the collection can help maximize XP. This means setting the NFT’s price close to the lowest price currently listed for similar items in the collection to increase the likelihood of a sale.
- Make Collection Offers: Placing offers on NFTs within eligible collections can also earn XP. The higher of the bid, especially if it’s the highest bid, the more XP user might earn. Note that only the top bid counts for XP, not the second-highest or lower bids.
- Active Participation: XP is generally tied to active use of the platform. This includes engaging in activities that involve listing, bidding, or other interactive elements that OpenSea might introduce or highlight as XP-earning actions.
- Surprise XP Shipments/Boxes: OpenSea has mentioned the possibility of earning XP through opening “XP Shipments/Boxes,” though specifics on how these work or when they are available were not detailed in the information provided.
The collections must be approved by OpenSea for user’s actions to earn XP. Also, once an NFT has listed or placed an offer on is sold, the XP earning from that specific action stops.
This inadvertently led traders to deliberately lower NFT prices for bidding purposes, aiming to maximize XP gains, rather than engaging in straightforward buy-sell transactions (which do not yield XP).
Numerous prominent collections, including MAYC, Milady, and Kaito Genesis, experienced significant price declines.
Opensea’s Hasty Retreat
Under pressure and due to the ineffectiveness of this program, Opensea CEO dfinzer.eth announced on X the suspension of the program.
we’ve heard the feedback on the current XP system, and we’re putting a pause on XP given directly for listing and bidding
while we don’t think liquidity rewards are inherently bad (see more below), we understand that there are a lot of strong emotions towards point systems, and…
— dfinzer.eth | opensea (@dfinzer) February 18, 2025
