Reduced gas fees, no down payments, and more: why OpenSea’s switching to the Seaport protocol is cool

On 14 June the biggest NFT marketplace in Web3 OpenSea introduced its migration to the Seaport Protocol. It opens the possibility to exchange any combination of NFTs and cryptocurrencies for other NFTs and cryptocurrencies.

Here’s what’s new

• Significantly lower gas costs (~35%). To see lower gas fees when selling or transferring NFTs, you’ll need to approve collections (token addresses) — but this is a one-time cost per collection, and no existing listings will be affected by the migration
• The ability to make offers on entire collections or on multiple items with specific attributes (traits) which is the first of its kind for Ethereum NFT marketplaces
• New OpenSea users will no longer have to pay an account initialization fee (proxy deployment)
• Floor prices and % rarity will be displayed by attribute
• Signatures to confirm actions using your wallet will be much easier to read and understand. The typed signature request will be different depending on which contract you’re interacting with. A signature request means you’re authorizing your wallet to take action, such as connecting to OpenSea’s platform or buying or selling an NFT.

NFT marketplace calculated that by removing the setup fee alone, the OpenSea community could save $120m each year. Generally, a new contract will save $460m+ in total fees each year.

And more perks to come. The company works on developing features that will enable listing many NFTs in a single transaction. Also, creators will be able to define multiple payout addresses on OpenSea.