Compilation of the original text: Lynch, Chain Catcher

Compilation of the original text: Lynch, Chain Catcher

OpenSea is the largest NFT trading market in the world and one of the biggest winners from the outbreak of the NFT industry. However, since the end of last year, it has faced problems such as being criticized for not paying attention to the community, centralization, and intensified competition.

Recently, Crypto@Stanford, an encryption group of Stanford University, conducted an exclusive interview with Alex Atallah, the co-founder and former CTO of OpenSea and alumnus of Stanford University, and discussed Opensea's early history and recent strategic thinking, the pyramid in the Web3 security field, and the competition it faces .

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step into encryption

C@S: How did you get into the encryption field?

Alex：I got into crypto in the summer of 2017 because I wanted to do something on the cutting edge of technology. I've always regretted that I missed the birth of the Internet. I love the history of technology, and the birth story of the internet is so exciting. I have a crazy desire to know if there will ever be something like this again, because we had it, decades before the PC. So I feel like, every now and then, something seems to happen in tech.

In 2017, the candidates for the "next Internet" were virtual reality and encryption. The crypto space is interesting, and the community I've encountered here is 10 times more enthusiastic than any other Internet community I've ever seen. It's also really noisy, with a lot of projects doing ICOs, and a lot of value that doesn't look long-term. But I think if there is any community out there that is committed to long-term growth and includes the same passion, excitement, and developer engagement as the rest of the community, that would be very valuable.

Back in 2017, only a few projects met these criteria. They tend to be very low key and humble, the founders just give away their tokens and see what happens with this experiment. For example, CryptoPunks is a very low-key project that distributed all of its 10,000 NFTs for free, and its community grew organically around it. Other examples are Decentraland with virtual properties, or CryptoKitties.

When CryptoKitties was released, that was the first time I had a friend who was not interested in crypto sign up for a Metamask wallet. At that moment, I felt like "Wow, this is what you use encryption for. This is the actual building block for developers." It also felt like a new fundamental primitive for the web, very different from the web and cryptocurrency, There needs to be a place for people to discover them.

C@S: Regarding the NFT field, what is your argument?

Alex：NFT fulfills the underlying need to transfer value in a way that makes the community feel truly independent, and provides users with a whole new space to grow.I think there are creative people in existing digital communities, or a very rapid transfer of information between all members. And there is an underlying need to transfer value out. Depending on the community, it manifests itself in different ways. There are communities that will emerge around NFTs that never existed before.

My thesis is that this new web building block is a new way of expressing yourself as a creator, and interacting with creators as a fan, or as a curator of creative talent. There are some NFT varieties that are not available now that I think will power the core functionality of the network as well.

You can think of font licenses as NFTs, Calligraphers are rewarded with grants and royalties every time their fonts are sold on the secondary market, and it's pretty clear who owns which font's license and which ones are better than others The font is more scarce and very clear. Or you could imagine a pass to a private digital experience.

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text

C@S: Can you describe your "aha" moment when you came up with OpenSea?

Alex：Founder Devin's "aha" moment was when he was playing CryptoKitties.There were already exchanges for ERC-20 tokens at that time, so we thought we should build a marketplace for all the ERC-721 tokens that would come out, the way eBay did. This seems like the right time, as CryptoKitties is in the stage of breaking out. There are a few other projects all in different verticals: an art project for CryptoPunks, and a virtual land project for Decentraland.

Whether ERC-721 will see explosive changes is not clear. CryptoKitties did get a lot of attention, but it still doesn't have that many users. It's clear that the user experience is poor. Buying NFTs, selling NFTs, and finding detailed transaction histories was really hard (and still is).

We think OpenSea is sufficient to solve these problems. OpenSea will be the source of truth for NFTs. Just like users use block explorers to understand what happened to transactions on the blockchain, OpenSea will show users what happened to NFT transactions, no matter which blockchain they were created on, or they are attached to What kind of metadata is on.

C@S: When you launched OpenSea, what was your strategy for competing against Rare Bits, a competitor with an experienced team? How are you navigating your market?

Alex: Whenever a new project seems exciting, we talk to these users and find out what they want from OpenSea and see how we can earn their loyalty.We actively do this with every project we can find, and every project demonstrates some kind of commitment. We also pay great attention to user experience. We hope that the market can be very easy to browse, and new projects are constantly being discovered.

When Rare Bits launched, it had a better user experience than opensea, and we looked at it and were like, "Well, we have to really improve to make sure we can maintain the best market position." So we added a search index, And greatly improved filtering, we worked with items and sellers to try to figure out new sales patterns. We then used the Wyvern protocol, which got rid of listing fees so users could sell items without gas fees.

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Alex's new role at OpenSea

C@S: As a co-founder and former CTO, you have been an integral part of OpenSea's exponential growth. Can you describe your role in OpenSea and your daily work?

Alex：We actually just brought in a new chief technology officer, Nadav Hollander, through the acquisition of a company called Dharma. I'm still with the company, but transitioning to focus on the developer ecosystem, security research, and recently announced venture capital projects. My day job usually revolves around these three things, plus some orientation work.

Our developer ecosystem right now is really limited to people who have already delved into NFTs, it doesn't really cater to developers who just want to tinker with smart contracts with the click of a button. So we're working on improving the developer experience, as well as working on improving the bottom-up funnel feedback so that when developers have questions, pull requests, or feature requests, we can engage with them in a timely manner to understand what should be incorporated into our platform.

In terms of security, last week Opensea cooperated with about 20 companies to launch an NFT security group, including Coinbase, Adobe, Metamask, Rarible, Nifty Gateway, MakersPlace, etc.The group's goal is to share malicious contracts and dangerous NFTs, keeping users as safe as possible.

In a sense, web3 is a big meta-platform. Users can jump from one website to another at will, and the data they see is the same. Users can see what they own because they truly own it digitally. Therefore, every website must set up protective measures to avoid accidental loss of users. Therefore, the security of NFTs is a very large area and needs to be handled properly.

C@S: Can you discuss in more depth your motivation for acquiring Dharma?

Alex: The team at Dharma is really great. In the crypto space, almost all companies are opportunists, rushing into this gold rush and building on shaky foundations. Dharma has established a solid foundation with high-quality smart contracts to provide driving force for users.

The mobile app they launched a few years ago really raised the bar for encrypted mobile apps. It's a great fiat onramp for an L2 blockchain like Polygon, with a great user experience and design. It was the best app Devin and I felt at the time.

Our top priority is to build the most reliable, trustworthy, and inclusive marketplace possible. This acquisition is consistent with the above goals, and everyone in the Dharma team, such as Brendan and Nadav, is very consistent with OpenSea in terms of cultural connotation, which is of great significance.

C@S: Regarding the content of the NFT security group initiative mentioned above, what specific security challenges do you think there are in the NFT field?

Alex：You can think of the security challenges in the NFT space as a pyramid.At the bottom layer, is the blockchain itself.Ethereum is very solid and not many issues have been found about its security. Some new chains have problems from time to time, for example, some methods of denial of service attacks have not really happened on Ethereum.

On top of the blockchain, there are smart contracts and various types of programs that clearly indicate the owner of the NFT.There is a lot of room for problems at this layer, with many contracts not properly using the "transfer out" functionality that allows NFTs to be transferred between different users. Need to find a good way to audit these transactions without disappointing users when they happen. This is very important to prevent people from losing interest in NFTs when they reach the next billion users.

On top of the smart contract is metadata.We've seen attempts to attach malicious metadata to NFTs. It is metadata with a cross-site scripting attack, metadata with some deceptive effect on the user, or a phishing attack. A lot of it is more akin to the web2 security plane.

At the very top of the pyramid, is user interoperability.first level title

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About OpenSea

C@S: Does OpenSea plan to keep governance/ownership centralized instead of being a DAO and a community-owned vault?

Alex：We're thinking about it and trying to come up with some new ideas. We're more than happy to reflect on how we go about implementing it. But we don't have any plans to share this with you yet.

C@S: Compared with platforms such as Rarible, SuperRare, and the upcoming Coinbase NFT and Gamestop NFT platforms, what is the competitive advantage of OpenSea?

Alex："Optionality" is one of our biggest advantages.We've spent a lot of time making sure NFTs from around the world are displayed correctly on OpenSea.We're trying to be a broader marketplace that covers every major NFT blockchain, every type of metadata, every type of image, every type of NFT attachment, and make sure that the information the user finds (volume, attention, transactions, account history, what platform the previous transactions took place on) is accurate.

We spend more time on these features than other platforms, and we try to be as comprehensive as possible to give people a clear understanding of the entire NFT world.

C@S: OpenSea was founded in late 2017, followed by the 2018/2019 bear market. How did you survive the bear market? Do you have any advice for entrepreneurs?

Alex：The most important thing to me is the developers. Even when the volume of transactions on OpenSea isn't huge, or usage is flat or declining, we're seeing developers and creators keep trying cool new things. They'll pop up and just discover a new way to use NFTs, or a new type of art that can be connected to NFTs, and keep this area constantly exciting.

It is far less volatile than the market in terms of the number of innovative developers. Its retention rate is high, and the retention rate is not related to the quantity or price of ETH. So that's an exciting sign as well.

C@S: How big is your current team? How much has it grown since last year?

Alex：Our team currently has around 110 people. This time last year, there were about 10 of us. increased by 11 times.