Exclusive Interview with OpenSea Vice President: The Company is Not Seeking to Sell and is Focused on Development in Three Key Areas

Interviewee: Kelly Digregorio, Vice President of Content Partnerships at OpenSea

Interview and Author: Wendy, Foresight News

"Our CEO never said OpenSea is for sale," Kelly Digregorio, Vice President of Content Partnerships at OpenSea, clarified this issue during an interview with Foresight News at the recent Consensus conference. She further explained, "I think the transmission of information in that interview may have been influenced in some way, leading to a discrepancy between how the media expressed it and our CEO's original intent or direct statement."

In a report published in January this year, crypto media DLNews quoted OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer as saying he was "open-minded" about acquisitions.

When this report was widely circulated, the public did not seem too surprised. On one hand, the NFT market has cooled during the bear market; on the other hand, OpenSea is facing strong competition from emerging rivals like Blur. In November last year, OpenSea had already significantly reduced its workforce by 50%.

Although Animonca Chairman Yat Siu believes that the overall NFT market is not as bleak as the outside world imagines, and has improved with the overall crypto market's recovery, it still faces considerable challenges.

In this market environment, how does OpenSea compete and develop? To address these questions, Foresight News engaged in further dialogue with Kelly Digregorio.

Foresight News: Two years ago at Consensus, NFTs were a very hot topic, but now the heat seems to have diminished. However, you just mentioned that you are still building some very exciting things. Can you share more with us?

OpenSea: There are many interesting and practical NFT activities happening on OpenSea. For OpenSea, there are many exciting developments in practical NFTs. We recently announced a partnership with Gunzilla Games, where the OpenSea marketplace will integrate their Avalanche subnet, allowing players and OpenSea users to trade in-game NFT assets. The first project launched on GUNZ will be Gunzilla Games' cyberpunk-style battle royale game Off The Grid, which will be released this year on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. This is a significant development in the Web3 gaming space.

We also recently partnered with Coachella to launch a pass NFT series before the Coachella music festival, which can be purchased on a dedicated collection page on OpenSea. Earlier this year, we launched a new feature that allows users to create crypto wallets using email, making it very easy for users to purchase NFTs. Throughout the Coachella music festival, fans completed over 55,000 tasks, including purely digital tasks and live tasks throughout the festival venue, allowing users to collect NFTs, accumulate points, and win prizes such as Coachella VIP passes and various other exciting rewards.

OpenSea has also made multiple deployments or upgrades to the NFT marketplace recently. We upgraded from Seaport 1.5 to Seaport 1.6, and one of the technologies behind this upgrade includes something called pre-execution zone hooks. Its purpose is to allow checking for specific flags in a certain area before executing a transaction, such as whether there are creator fees, meaning whether there are creator fees on secondary markets. This allows us to enforce creator fees on all transactions executed on the Seaport protocol, whether those transactions occur on OpenSea or other markets or aggregators that integrate the Seaport protocol. If interested, you can refer to this.

We also introduced ERC-721C compatibility, a standard introduced by Limit Breaks that allows creators to implement programmable and enforceable creator earnings on-chain, and supports creators in implementing custom logic. This is a boon for the gaming community, as many game companies have decided to adopt ERC-721C in their game infrastructure, and we have been researching these developments over the past six months.

But one thing we are really focused on is OpenSea 2.0. OpenSea 2.0 will rebuild the architecture in many ways, allowing us to deploy faster for users, creators, game companies, and other stakeholders in the industry. This will enable us to integrate chains more quickly. A few months ago, we integrated Blast, and recently we also integrated Sei, so the ability to quickly integrate other chains is something we really want to push forward.

We are very excited about the various use cases happening in the NFT space, especially regarding game development with ERC-721C. We are interested in developments related to tokenized assets, real-world assets, ticketing tokenization, merchandise tokenization, and more.

We have experimented with burn-to-redeem technology on OpenSea. For example, we conducted some airdrop events, including a game airdrop with Captain & Company, where you can burn an NFT representing a loot box, and then you will receive three NFTs that are essentially game components for the Captain & Company game. We also reached an agreement with Coachella regarding the burn-to-redeem feature, where you can burn your NFT to obtain VIP passes or merchandise boxes. There will also be upcoming collaborations to use the burn-to-redeem mechanism in different novel ways. This indeed provides consumers with something beyond the NFT itself, right? Obviously, owning an NFT as a collectible is very interesting.

But what is the practicality of it? What can you get with this NFT? Either a physical item sent to your home, or something to play in a game, or interact with some kind of experience. So I think NFTs are still an interesting thing that brings engagement, choice, and novelty to consumers.

Foresight News: From the outside, the NFT market seems to be cooling down a bit, but we know the entire crypto market is gradually warming up. Have you seen similar trends in the NFT space? If so, what are the main driving factors? You mentioned a lot about gaming; is that the main area you are currently focusing on?

OpenSea: The three areas we are currently focusing on are gaming, Web3 native areas, and what can broadly be called consumer loyalty, which may include companies transitioning from Web2 to Web3 or more internal partnerships within Web3.

A good example is that Samsung just launched their Web3 TV bundle, where they give away NFTs as part of the package for anyone who buys a Frame TV or Web3 TV, some of which can be redeemed for hardware like Ledger wallets and other giveaways. Samsung also launched the NFT Gallery TV app, allowing users to showcase NFTs in a personalized way. So, I think consumer loyalty can be a broad category, and it doesn't necessarily mean you are only focusing on large Web2 companies.

Foresight News: Why is gaming so important to OpenSea? Is it because of market size or other reasons?

OpenSea: Obviously, market size is a factor. The gaming community—whether it's game studios, game developers, or the gamers themselves—are very tech-savvy. And gaming allows for a lot of diversity in NFTs because games have various components and ways to integrate into gameplay, allowing NFTs to serve various functions in games, which is why I think gaming is an interesting use case.

There are many possibilities in the gaming space, such as games like Gunzilla Games' Off the Grid and Shrapnel that cross over between Web3 and traditional distribution models (like consoles), which I find very interesting.

I believe there is considerable potential in this area; NFTs can be part of games, and they can be part of fun experiences like Coachella Quest. So I think there is growth there, and it doesn't necessarily need to be formally labeled as NFTs.

Foresight News: Now there are some star projects emerging that might bring some changes to the NFT market, like Story Protocol. We recently interviewed their co-founder, who believes that projects like Story Protocol could help revive the NFT market. What do you think? Do you have any collaboration with them?

OpenSea: We do not have a formal partnership with Story Protocol. I am very interested in the content they are deploying. From a macro perspective, they focus on the sourcing of intellectual property and believe that NFTs can fundamentally support this use case. Companies like Story have proposed a method for how NFTs can be used to prove the provenance of AIGC or AI-generated content. I think this is another case where NFT technology could play a significant role in tracking and establishing intellectual property, enabling the transfer of these rights between entities and encoding this information on the blockchain. This is another growth opportunity; people may not necessarily explicitly talk about it as NFTs, but NFT technology will be an important force driving the tracking of intellectual property provenance and rights transfer.

Foresight News: Beyond IP tracking, I think since the last cycle, people have been talking about the concept of NFTfi, and there are some projects of this kind built on the Blast ecosystem. What is your view on the trend of NFTfi? Will OpenSea embrace this trend?

OpenSea: I think the ultimate development of NFTfi remains to be seen. NFTfi is likely just a fractional ownership of NFTs, as discussed two or three years ago. So it will be interesting to see what NFTfi ultimately becomes and how different companies create value in this space.

I find the name NFTfi very appealing. It is evident that we already have DeFi, and now NFTfi appears to be more related to the specific or monetized value associated with NFTs. However, markets like OpenSea have always seen secondary trading of NFTs as the norm. I think how NFTfi will specifically manifest remains to be seen. For me, the term is still somewhat vague.

Foresight News: Since we are discussing topics related to Blur, I would like to ask how you view the competition between you?

OpenSea: I am the Vice President of Business Development, and my formal title is Vice President of Global Content Partnerships. I would say that OpenSea and Blur are different products, and our focus is also different.

We are very focused on creator tools. For example, we launched OpenSea Studio in October last year. At the same time, we are focused on enforcing creator fees on secondary sales in the Seaport marketplace and aggregators, which is why we decided to upgrade from Seaport 1.5 to 1.6. I think in terms of user experience, the OpenSea wallet we launched in collaboration with Privy is indeed a differentiating factor for users. We are currently running a large promotional campaign with Base called "GetBased." We have many very interesting Base creators launching various NFTs, most of which do not have a fixed supply and can be minted continuously. We are also implementing Farcaster frame functionality on Warpcast.

OpenSea has made a conscious effort to be very close to creators and users. We believe this is a market differentiator that truly provides a high-quality, robust experience. We are very focused on trust and safety, having launched the Copymint detection system to provide the best experience for users and creators.

Foresight News: There have been some media reports saying that your CEO publicly expressed a willingness to sell OpenSea. Is this true? I'm not sure if you are the right person to answer this question, but I would like to know why? What kind of potential buyers are you looking for?

OpenSea: I am not the right person to answer this question, but our CEO never directly said that. I believe the transmission of information in that interview may have been influenced in some way, leading to a discrepancy between how the media expressed it and our CEO's original intent or direct statement. The CEO did not say that OpenSea is for sale.

Foresight News: Since you are in charge of global business development, are there any specific regional markets where OpenSea or NFTs overall have a higher growth rate?

OpenSea: I think there is development potential in many different regions based on different use cases or verticals. For example, there are many gaming activities in Japan and South Korea. In North America, there is a strong foothold in areas like art creation and generative AI. So depending on the vertical, certain regions may lean more towards that specific direction. I think this is an evolving landscape.

Foresight News: This year is very special; it is a U.S. election year. We see a lot of discussions about politics, and many politicians, like Trump, have launched NFTs. How do you think this special political environment will play a role in the NFT market?

OpenSea: Generally, NFTs—perhaps more so cryptocurrencies—will become a political topic in elections. This may have driven some of the legislation recently passed in the Senate. I don’t know how it will develop, but I think it is becoming a more prominent political issue.

Foresight News: What about regulation? Some top companies in the industry, like Uniswap, Coinbase, and Consensys, are in lawsuits with different regulatory bodies. As a leader in the NFT space, how do you view the risks of U.S. regulation?

OpenSea: Regulation is a topic that is often discussed, but it is not OpenSea's top priority. Because it is known as a very trusted trading marketplace. Moreover, we have implemented strong trust and safety measures to ensure that participants in the industry—including users and creators—feel safe and secure.