OpenSea acquires NFT marketplace aggregator Gem to serve 'professional' users

This article comes fromDecrypt & The Blocksecondary title

Odaily Translator | Nian Yin Si Tang

Summary:

Summary:

- OpenSea acquired NFT marketplace aggregator Gem.

- Gem supports bulk purchases across multiple marketplaces, some of its functionality will be integrated into OpenSea.

OpenSea announced the move yesterday, with CEO and co-founder Devin Finzer writing in ablog postblog post

The Gem was added to serve a higher level of NFT buyers.

"As the NFT community grows, we recognize the need to better serve more experienced 'professional' users and provide more flexibility and choice to users of different experience levels," Finzer wrote.

Gem is a single platform connecting various NFT marketplaces, including OpenSea, LooksRare, and Rarible. Gems allow users to buy assets from either of these markets in one transaction, potentially saving considerable fees. Additionally, the gem integrates rarity rankings for NFT collectibles.

Finzer also confirmed the allegations against Gem co-founder Neso. BuzzFeed recentlyto reportto report

“During the course of our due diligence, we became aware of some deeply concerning allegations against a former member of the Gem leadership team under the pseudonym Neso,” Finzer wrote. “Following an investigation of these allegations, the employee Terminated immediately before closing. This individual was never, and never will be, associated with OpenSea."

secondary title

What are Gems?

Gem is similar to Genie, another NFT marketplace aggregator that specializes in bulk buying — specifically “floor sweeps,” where someone buys a bunch of the lowest-priced NFTs in a certain NFT collection. This momentum was already causing concern at the time.However, Gems, which only launched in January of this year, have apparently only recently started leading the way. Earlier this month, analytics platform DappRadaremphasize, the number of transactions processed by Gem and the total transaction volume are about 10 times that of Genie. The report states that Gem supports LooksRare and allows users to earn LOOKS reward tokens through Gem transactions. Since the report was published, Genie。

Also added the function of purchasing and claiming LOOKS tokens through its platformGenie may be plotting its own unique response to Gem's recent rise. For example, following the OpenSea announcement, Genie founder Scott Gray tweetedrelease

“$GENIE” — implying that the platform may issue an official Genie token. This news was also immediately noticed and used by scammers. Scott Gray reminded on Twitter today that someone has been found to use fake GENIE tokens to deceive users, and said that Genie has not launched tokens yet.

However, the lead developer of the gem, Vasa,expressexpress

It is still possible for the project to launch a token.

“(Launching) rewards/tokens is not out of the question,” Vasa said on the project’s Discord server, after saying Gem would still operate as a separate brand and product.

"We will not change the way we work with all the markets we support, and we will ensure that the way we operate remains fair and transparent," he added.

In the crypto ecosystem, it is common for projects to “decentralize” themselves when project founders hand over control to their communities. When this happens, they typically build a governance system and distribute tokens to early adopters to help the most loyal users take control. Voting using these tokens can be used to decide the development of the platform.

At the same time, since these tokens often have monetary value, this kind of airdrop may make some people "big money". Past large airdrops include Uniswap, dYdX, and Ethereum Name Service (Ethereum Name Service). Some of Gem's users want it to do the same, and they may have spent large amounts of cryptocurrency, using the service multiple times with multiple wallets, hoping to be rewarded someday (a process known as airdrop mining) .

Since OpenSea has yet to launch a token (although competing NFT platforms such as LooksRare are already doing so), it appears that the projects under its wing will not be doing so either. But information revealed by Vasa suggests that may not be the case.