OpenSea switches Seaport Protocol to slash Ethereum gas fees
Following the recent launch of a new feature to help prevent NFT scams on its platform, OpenSea is now moving to tackle the issue of high gas fees. The leading NFT marketplace announced that it is migrating its operations to a new protocol called Seaport.
The “Seaport Protocol” is a new smart contract that will allow its OpenSea users to save up to 35% on Ethereum gas fees and according to the company, new accounts will no longer be needed to pay the one-time “setup fee” OpenSea previously charged.
Seaport is an open-source and decentralized protocol that was audited by Web3 security firms OpenZeppelin and Trail of Bits, engineered to enable users to include multiple items per on-chain transaction and isn’t exclusive to OpenSea.
OpenSea operated on the less-efficient Wyvern protocol prior to the migration. Wyvern was a victim of an exploit back in February when traders lost $1.7 million in an off-platform phishing scam.
The explained in a Twitter thread that “the new contract will save [over] $460 million in total fees each year,” clarifying that it does not control or operate the Seaport protocol and merely builds on top of it. The removal of the setup fee would also potentially result in $120 million (35,000 ETH) per year in additional savings.
Today, we're officially moving to the Seaport protocol!
— OpenSea (@opensea) June 14, 2022
We estimate the new contract will save $460m + in total fees each year. But, that’s not all 👀 Let’s go through the updates… https://t.co/89B1FJARnl
OpenSea is now looking to build a tool that will allow NFT holders to list multiple NFTs for sale at once and pay a one-time gas fee for the batch of listings, a feature its competitor LookRare launched two months ago.
The firm also revealed that NFT collection owners will be able to add more than one payout address for sales and royalties in the near future. It held a two-week code audit report contest prior to the launch, with a prize pool of up to 1 million USDC for anyone who found issues in the code of its Seaport protocol.
From June 1, offers and listings will no longer be added to the Wyvern protocol, while OpenSea will stop fetching Wyvern contract data by July 13 as listings created on the Wyvern contract will no longer be visible on the platform.
The migration comes a month after Kraken’s upcoming NFT marketplace announced that it would have zero gas fees for on-platform trades.
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