OpenSea IPO Hints at Quick Reviews from Crypto Users Expecting token

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OpenSea has hired a new CFO, Brian Roberts, who has said he is working on the company’s upcoming IPO. Some NFT collectors are shocked by the news, believing that OpenSea should launch a token instead.

Amid the increase in OpenSea’s NFT transaction volume over the past few months, a question has circulated among its most important users: will they ultimately be rewarded with a token airdrop?

Now that the company has announced plans for an Initial Public Offering (IPO), some crypto die-hards fear an OpenSea token may not happen – and they are talking about it.

Today, OpenSea announced the hiring of Brian Roberts as CFO, removing him from the Lyft ridesharing service, where he held the same title. Roberts, who helped Lyft go public, told Bloomberg he is already planning the NFT market IPO.

“When you have a business that grows as fast as this one, it would be foolish not to think about its IPO,” he said, adding that he thought it “would be welcomed on the market. public market in view of its growth “.

He might be right about the wider public reception. The popular cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase went public in April and generated a frenzy of investment and attention, with some hailing it as the most exciting IPO in years. Coinbase (COIN) crushed the NASDAQ benchmark price at launch and showed Wall Street ready for crypto (and vice versa).

Not everyone was thrilled to see a crypto-centric company take the traditional IPO route, however. First Coinbase employee Olaf Carlson-Wee (now CEO of Polychain Capital) told Decrypt in May that he believes the exchange could have become much more valuable by launching and listing his own Ethereum token instead. .

Imagine being the largest and most successful NFT marketplace, choosing to go IPO instead of issuing a token.

NGMI.

– Arthur (@ Arthur_0x) December 6, 2021

With the announcement of OpenSea’s impending IPO plans, other crypto natives lament the NFT exchange’s apparent plans to avoid community ownership via a governance token (i.e. – say a token that grants users certain privileges, such as voting rights).

“Imagine being the largest and most successful NFT marketplace but choosing to go IPO instead of issuing [a] token, ”wrote Arthur Cheong, founder of DeFiance Capital. He added “NGMI” or “not going to make it”.

“It’s a shame to hear that OpenSea is selling and doing an IPO,” wrote collector NFT Punk_2070. “Their VCs didn’t get them to where they are today. We were doing.”

To be clear, OpenSea hasn’t definitely said it won’t issue a token. He could possibly concoct a hybrid model that combines a traditional IPO with some type of community token, for example. However, the IPO chatter has some observers who believe that OpenSea has gone for traditional corporate governance over a decentralized, token-based model.

This is not a new perception. The competing NFT marketplace Rarible partly stood out by launching its RARI governance token, which rewards collectors and creators for using the platform. SuperRare did much the same with its RARE token in August.

When Decrypt spoke with Rarible CEO and co-founder Alexei Falin last week, ahead of today’s OpenSea IPO chatter, he suggested that competing markets have different goals.

“We have a slightly different approach to OpenSea,” Falin told Decrypt. “We try to be a native Web3 company — decentralized as much as possible. “

Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is a recent example of a crypto project that dropped a governance token, handing out millions of tokens to early user wallets in November. Within days, the market capitalization of the tokens distributed exceeded $ 1 billion. Currently, the fully diluted market cap stands at $ 4.7 billion, per CoinGecko.

Today’s chatter about the OpenSea IPO has convinced some in the crypto industry that the leading marketplace – which handles billions of dollars in NFT trading volume every last month – has taken its toll. decision. And in their opinion, it is not on the side of decentralization and community ownership.

“Crypto companies going public will never make sense to me,” DAO builder Cooper Turley tweeted. “Give property to the community that makes you valuable.” The tokens will win on equity every time.

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