Opensea is one of the largest marketplaces for non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Non-fungible tokens are unique digital items that can be bought and sold. These digital items include collectibles, ownership records for physical assets, game items, digital art, event tickets, and even domain names.

Who creates NFT art?

NFTs are designed by artists, gaming companies, content creators, graphic designers, 3D designers and Musicians.

Why are people buying NFT Art?

According to SuperRare CEO, “People are motivated to buy NFTs because it provides a unique connection to the creator that does not exist with any other art form”.

Why not buy digital art directly using dollars?

The blockchain system of NFTs helps to prevent fraud and theft. Copies of the original piece of digital art can fly on the internet, but there is still only one original and only the person who owns the NFT for the digital piece of art owns the original.

How is NFT investment different from stocks?

Investing in NFTs is different from stocks in this way: investing in stock depends on how much the investment is worth, while investing in NFTs depends on how much someone is willing to pay for it.

What’s the purpose of owning an NFT?

However, investing in NFTs brings huge returns when the art’s resale value is put into consideration. Owning and staring at the art does not bring returns, but might give satisfaction to its owner. It is the selling of the piece of art to the highest bidder that brings in big gains.

The demand for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) keeps increasing as bigger names host their NFTs, bringing in a new wave of attention to their followers who are not crypto oriented. Also, the transformation of the gaming and collectibles space makes it hugely popular.

Gamers, collectors and artists: High demand

Gamers and collectors can solely own in-game items and other unique assets as well as make money from them. High demand for NFTs comes majorly from gamers, collectors, and investors. Artists can sell their artwork in digital form directly to a wide range of buyers without using an auction house or gallery which helps in keeping a greater portion of their profits after sales. The digital space is full of opportunities and more adoption will continue to encourage creators to create and design more digital art. It is important to note that digital artwork can be programmed, and royalties can be paid to creators when a particular artwork is sold to a new owner.

HOW TO USE OPENSEA

Opensea is a peer-to-peer exchange where buyers and sellers meet to transact. Using Opensea means interacting directly with others on the blockchain system; and this requires a wallet to transfer all activities done into financial transactions.

Before transacting on Opensea, a wallet is needed; it is important to note that a wallet is different from an address, which is also different from an Opensea account.  A wallet helps to store digital money, handles identity and credentials. Also, it manages access to items owned and helps to broadcast transactions to the blockchain. Wallets are important, they are needed to create and manage addresses.  An address is an identity in the web 3 world and it is a 42-character hexadecimal string that basically corresponds to a unique location in the Ethereum network.  A wallet is a tool you need to interact with the blockchain; Opensea also is another tool needed to interact with the blockchain.

An Opensea account provides an opportunity to display items using the blockchain system. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are not stored in any user’s Opensea account; they are owned by an address on the blockchain. There are different wallets developed by different teams of developers which serve the same purpose.

Note: You own the address, and you control your account using your private key or seed phrase.

Getting started with Opensea

First, connect the wallet!

This is the homepage of Opensea; by the top right corner are the menus. Select the Profile menu and click on Account settings.

You will be required to select a wallet to connect to your Opensea account.

There are different options available:  Metamask, Bitski, Fortmatic, WalletConnect, WalletLink, Dapper Authereum, Torus, and Arkane Network.

I personally use Metamask, but you can select from the given options and get started.

MetaMask Download and Installation:

Download the MetaMask extension from the google chrome web store and install it.

Once you have set up your wallet, it’s time to connect it to Opensea. Immediately after you have got your wallet connected, you will be able to see digital assets on your Opensea account if you own some already. Also, you will be able to make changes to your Opensea account settings on the general settings page.

Now that the wallet and Opensea are connected perfectly, Ether (ETH) is needed for gas fee and items payment.

Where to buy Ether (ETH):

You can purchase ETH from exchanges and then transferred to your wallet address. Some of these exchanges are, but not limited to, Coinbase, Binance,  KuCoin, OKEx, or FTX.

Navigating through Opensea

The browse page is the heart of Opensea. It is the first stop for every user who wants to find things to buy.

Use the navigation options to browse through art, sports, trading cards and other collections. The lists can be sorted by various criteria, like lowest to highest price. All prices displayed are in Ether, and dollar equivalents can be seen inside the item descriptions.

The user names (all the creative expressions seen on left side or below items) are the users. (You can set up your own creative nickname in the Profile section, add the email id and confirm the account by clicking on the email link received.)

The white search bar with the placeholder “Search items, collections and accounts” helps to search for items if the name of the item is known to users.

Type in your desire digital assets and press enter and get results. If the item name is not known, by default Opensea display trending items from the top collections at the top of the search result. The display results can be sorted and redefined by users using the available sort options that Opensea offers:

• Recently Listed: Most recently listed items for sale will appear first.
• Recently Created: Most recently created items will appear first.
• Ending Soon: Items with auctions which deadline is approaching will appear first.
• Lowest Price: The least expensive items will appear first.
• Highest Price: The most expensive items will appear first.
• Highest Last Sale: Items that have sold for lots of ETH will appear first.
• Most Viewed: The items that have most view will appear first.
• Most Favorited: The items liked by majority of users will appear first.
• Oldest: The items that were created the longest time ago will appear first.

Another filtering option is “Collections”; using this brings out a variety of other filtering options which will appear. Items can be filtered using a specific token or coin name displayed on left side bar. If things start going wrong, you can reset by clicking the “blue ticked box” in the top right corner of the sidebar or clicking on the “Browse” option in the navigation bar, or clearing the search criteria with “All Clear”.

The picture above shows four status menu options that must not be overlooked.

Buy Now:  Opensea shows lots of items that are not for auction; this option display only items that are currently listed for sale. These can be bought outright by paying the price.

On Auctions: Instead of buying at a Market price or immediately, the bid is placed and the top bidder gets a reward when the auction ends.

Has Offers: Opensea allows its users to make offers when an item(s) is not on sale.

New: New collections are displayed here.

Buying Digital item(s) on Opensea

There are different types of listing available for sellers on Opensea and the buying process is a little bit different for each type of listing:

1. Fixed price listings
2. Dutch Auction listings
3. English Auction listings

1. Fixed Price Listings: This is a traditional “buy it now” transaction, which is common with e-commerce stores like Amazon, Jumia, Aliexpress etc. A seller picks a price, confirms the listing, and the item remains on sale, the price never changes. Buyers can buy at any time.
2. Dutch Auction Listings: This has a starting price, ending price and auction duration. These are all determined by the seller; the seller starts the auction at a level above the expected demand, and the price declines over time. (Note: Both Fixed Price and Dutch Auction listings can be fulfilled immediately by clicking the “Buy now” button and follow the prompts from your wallet provider.)
3. English Auction Listing: This is often called “auction”. It is a situation where the seller offers an item for sale at a minimum price while waiting for bids. Duration is set in which the seller will accept the highest bid. This type requires some WETH and user patience when bidding.

Making a bid on an auction on Opensea, you must first convert your ETH to WETH (Go to the W-Ether Station on Profile menu to make the swap)

(Note: WETH is an ERC20 token that’s pegged to the price of Ether.)

Conversion can be made back and forth between ETH and WETH right on Opensea. Visit the offers tab of your account page; go to my profile and use the CONVERT WETH. Connect to your Matemask and enter a value in the ETH box and click the “WRAP” button to get some WETH.

Wait for the WETH conversion transaction to confirm.  Once it is done, you will see that some of your ETH balance has been converted to WETH.  Now, you can take that WETH to the page of an item that is on auction and place a bid. To place a bid, enter a bid equal to or higher than the minimum bid in the bid input field, then click the continue button.  You will be redirected to a page where you confirm your bid.  Click the “Confirm bid” button and follow the prompts from your wallet to make your bid.

The following information is presented in the picture above:

Minimum bid: The minimum bid is ETH 0.51

Timing info: When the auction will end

Place bid: An offer is required to be made by the user.

Click on Place Bid to place your bid. No more action is required from you, just keep an eye on the auction.  If you are the highest bidder when the auction ends, you will receive the item. Opensea will handle the transfer of goods and funds; if the profile setup is complete i.e., you have input your email on the account setting page, Opensea will email you to let you know about the outcome of the auction.

Selling Digital items on Opensea

Opensea with a superb technology ensures that users can buy and sell digital assets directly with their peers, all without relying on escrow or trusted third-party payment processors. Deals are atomic, i. e., either the whole deal is processed or none of it happens. Transactions on Opensea almost always go well, but when deal(s) goes south, it’s like the deal never started.

Unlike eBay, where buyers are to pay sellers before shipment of goods, Opensea enables the seller to make a binding promise to sell goods for a certain price. The buyer makes a binding promise to pay the price, and when those two promises are paired up with one another, the deal happens in a single transaction. To sell items on Opensea, users need to create a listing. As mentioned earlier, we have a few different types of listings; and each one serves a different purpose. Creating a listing does not take time and the process starts the same way for each of the listings.

Click on “Submit NFTs” to create your collections.

Click on “create”

Enter details and continue…

Collection created.

Added Item(s) to your collection. To sell, click on sell.

A Dutch auction will thus be created. The starting price will be 0.1 ETH. Toggle the “Include ending price” switch, set an ending price of 0.001 (the lowest price I’m willing to accept), and select the “one month” option from the “Set expiration date” dropdown. Over the course of the next month, the price will gradually decline. By default, your listing will be available to anyone who wants to buy it, but you can make a listing private by toggling the privacy switch and specifying the address that’s eligible to purchase it. If you create a private listing, it will still be visible to everyone, but only the specified address will be able to purchase it.

If it is your first time selling on OpenSea, you will get a few popups asking you to complete a few initialization transactions. And the first time you create a listing for an item from a new collection, you will have to do a transaction. But if you have done the initialization transaction before, you will only need to sign a single message, which is instant and free. Then, a page will show saying “listing successful”.

Listing two items together (Bundle)

Items can be sold either bundle or unbundle i. e., together or single. The bundle page can be accessed from sale by clicking on items. Bundling of items depends on gas fee; for instance, users can bundle up to 30 items in a single listing.

Add a name and description, then set the price for the bundle. On this page, you can set an ending price and an expiration date.  Adding values to these fields will convert your listing from a fixed price listing into a Dutch auction like the one did above.

Double-check that everything looks right and click the “post your listing” button. If it is your first time selling on OpenSea, you will get a few popups asking you to complete some initialization transactions.  But if you have done this kind of thing before, you will only need to sign a single message.

Happy NFT trading!

Also read: Here’s Your Deep Dive On Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT)