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OpenSea Foundation Cayman Islands Registration Sparks Airdrop Speculation
OpenSea recently announced its platform would be revamped in December.
What to know:
- An entity named OpenSea Foundation has registered in the Cayman Islands.
- The registration spurred speculation over a potential token airdrop as the Cayman Islands has a lighter regulatory regime than the U.S.
- The marketplace for non-fungible tokens will roll out its 2.0 platform this month, with more than 1 million users on the waitlist.
Non-fungible token (NFT) exchange OpenSea sparked speculation it is preparing a potential token airdrop after the OpenSea Foundation registered an entity in the Cayman Islands.
X user Waleswoosh, a pseudonymous researcher at Azuki, posted a screenshot of the OpenSea registration. The registration was present on the Cayman Island's general registry and was also confirmed to CoinDesk by OpenSea.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
The post led to speculation over whether the move was a step toward releasing a token in a more crypto-friendly jurisdiction than the U.S. A dashboard created on Dune lets OpenSea users check their historical activity to estimate how much a potential airdrop might be worth.
OpenSea declined to comment on whether it would be introducing an native token.
The company is headquartered in New York and was the primary venue for the NFT bull cycle in 2022, racking up a record $2.7 billion of trading volume on a single day in May that year. The emergence of rival platform Blur coupled with a wider market decline resulted in a loss of market share. Trading volume over the past 24 hours hit $21 million, less than 1% of the record.
The company was valued at $13 billion after it raised $300 million during the height of the 2022 cycle. The market has now shifted, with focus on memecoins like dogwifhat (WIF) and bonk (BONK) rather than non-fungible token projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks.
OpenSea plans to turn the tide back in its favor this month as it rolls out OpenSea 2.0. More than 1 million unique wallets have registered for the waitlist.
The new platform features a "retro" section, which rewards users for historical activity in the form of "points." Points leaderboards have been a common way of airdropping tokens to users this year by incentivizing ongoing activity and loyalty. There's no indication that OpenSea plans to follow that path, however.
UPDATE: Dec. 17, 15:29 UTC. Adds "foundation" to the headline and opening paragraph.
Oliver Knight
Oliver Knight is the co-leader of CoinDesk data tokens and data team. Before joining CoinDesk in 2022 Oliver spent three years as the chief reporter at Coin Rivet. He first started investing in bitcoin in 2013 and spent a period of his career working at a market making firm in the UK. He does not currently have any crypto holdings.
