opensea: the future of art gallery
In late 1980s, a New York based conceptual artist and photographer had an idea which many considered foolish and mostly blasphemous for the time. The idea was a marriage of worlds, which before that time never met and many insiders thought should never meet. That marriage was a three way union of internet, fine art and day trading, the union finally gave birth to Artnet, an art market website. Whether knowingly or oblivious to the final outcome of his project, Pierre Sernet will be a pioneer of decentralization of an industry notorious for its exclusivity and elitism.
First forward to 2017, in the same New York which have housed Artnet, two other pioneers, Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah, using an early tech created by Kevin McCoy three years prior and of course basics set by the success of Artnet, will create a marketplace for NFT exclusively.
Winning strategy
NFTs trade was a niche thing known by initiated mostly gamers and virtual worlds goers prior 2021. However early in 2021, due to high profile artists such as BEEPLE, 3LAU and other public figures such as Jack Dorsey listing their NFT projects, the awareness of this new market caused a bubble of sales which definitely ended in May 2021.
The surge in sales has mostly exposed a few weaknesses and inconveniences in the NFT market, and chief among those was the “gas price”. Gas price is the cost which goes into approving, minting, and hosting an NFT on a blockchain system. During those days, the price stood between 150 to 200 USD depending on the user platform or as the popular idiom “as poor as an artist”. The removal of the gas price by opensea opened a way for new artists and NFT collectors who may have been locked out by the high prices before that time. Another hindrance which was resolved by suppression of gas, was simply the entrepreneurial spirit. Minting or collecting NFT is like other business, you invest in expectation of a return on investment, With at least 200 USD in gas, the artist or the collector, need to make a sale at least above that price to even make a profit, removing the gas turn minting and collecting into a hobby, an artist or any other amateur can be involved in the circulation of NFT as the barrier are eased.
The lack of high investment cost gave rise to “lazy minting” phenomenon, where an artist or other amateur drop his NFTs on the website without any pressure to make an immediate sale as the artist can sign away authorization to the user, instead he or she wait for others to discover the NFT gallery on their pace. if the NFT is not discovered, an option for more galleries is available and even content editing. This eventually gives rise to a culture of learning things as you go by discovering what are the collectors looking for or what are maestros minting. This ceases to be a pure NFT gallery but a sort of school, where making progress is possible and learning as you go is encouraged.
Finally, the interactive experience between the artist and the user is a good touch on behalf of the platform. How do we make a personal distinction between the viewer and the collector? In physical galleries or expositions, there is always attached to the sale of art items, a personal note of the artist to the buyer. Opensea introduced such personal touch by providing an “unlockable content” feature where an artist leaves to the collector of the NFT, a personal touch which is not enjoyed by a regular view of the platform. Can be the inspiration behind the work, can be a personal story, it can be basically anything.
Looking over the horizon
Opensea is still a young platform, the universe is its oyster or in this case, the metaverse. I see an expansion of the gallery and digital parcel features into a fully integrated interactive 3D environment. We may see a “walk in” feature, an artist open day feature and other sort of applicable. A number of DAO (decentralized autonomous organizations) are working tirelessly to merge the 2D world to 3D environment and I believe this is the next frontier for opensea.
