OpenSea: Everything You Need to Know About the Token Airdrop Speculation

Three years after a peak NFT mania that drove monthly trading volume to billions of dollars and put the Bored Ape Yacht Club on The Tonight Show, the collectible tokens are once more gaining steam—and so is popular NFT marketplace OpenSea. 

NFT trading volume recently hit a three-month high, and after marketplace competitor Magic Eden concluded its own ME airdrop, speculation is heating up about a potential OpenSea token. 

The marketplace may or may not be teasing it, recently asking X (formerly Twitter) followers “How long have you been using OpenSea?” Many traders took it as a cheeky nod to user loyalty, typically a key metric used by platforms determining token airdrop allocations.

The firm’s biggest competitors, Blur and Magic Eden, have both completed airdrops to their respective users, with the latter airdropping more than $700 million to users a week ago. OpenSea once led the NFT world after raising funds at a $13.3 billion valuation in 2022, but has fallen sharply since as newer challengers have taken over.

Here’s everything we know about the chances of an OpenSea token and speculation surrounding the event.

OpenSea Foundation emerges

The largest piece of speculation about a potential OpenSea token airdrop comes from a recent filing in the Cayman Islands for an “OpenSea Foundation.” 

The filing sparked immediate intrigue among crypto participants, highlighted by a post from pseudonymous crypto personality Wale.Swoosh which garnered more than 1.4 million impressions on X.

Oftentimes, crypto organizations will create a foundation as a separate entity from its more established and consumer facing brand. Historically, these foundations then become the organizing bodies that communicate and facilitate token airdrops. 

Although registering a foundation does not guarantee that a token will follow, other organizations that have recently provided users with airdropped tokens have done so via their respective foundations.

Recent examples include the ME Foundation for Magic Eden or the Movement Network Foundation for the Ethereum layer-2 network Movement. 

A spokesperson for OpenSea confirmed to Decrypt that the foundation is indeed a registered entity, but did not comment further on any association to OpenSea.

That association became a bit more clear on December 20 when an X account using the name OpenSea Foundation posted “ocean enters the chat,” potentially teasing an OCEAN token.

The account, which was created in May 2024, is only following one account on the platform—OpenSea. Both OpenSea and its CEO, Devin Finzer, interacted with the post via their respective accounts.

While details are still scarce, a spokesperson for the OpenSea Foundation told Decrypt, “More to come soon.”

OpenSea 2.0 teases

While many NFT traders have urged OpenSea to drop a token for the last few years, speculation around a potential token crescendoed in November. 

At that time, OpenSea opened a waitlist for a completely reimagined marketplace called OpenSea 2.0, after the one-time top NFT platform scaled down its team in an effort to be more nimble and rethink its model.

“We’ve been quietly cooking at OpenSea,” OpenSea CEO and co-founder Devin Finzer posted on X. “To really innovate, sometimes you have to take a step back and reimagine everything.” 

Shortly after the waitlist opened, early beta users of OpenSea 2.0 began sharing snippets of new features that only fueled the token speculation.

In a thread that received more than 360,000 views on X, a pseudonymous beta tester going by the name john.weth showed off a leaderboard and point farming activity, suggesting that retroactive rewards were coming—though “how and what measure” were still to be determined.

OpenSea 2.0 was previously expected to launch some time in December, though no update has been provided at this time. To date, its waitlist has collected more than one million wallets.

Traders place their bets

Although details around a token launch are unknown, crypto bettors believe the chances of an OpenSea airdrop are increasing, according to prediction markets on Polymarket.

For example, the odds of an OpenSea token announcement before 2024 are now up to nearly 60%, a gain of 40% in the last week. The odds had briefly dipped to 20% in the morning hours of December 20, but rose sharply after the OpenSea Foundation account posted on X.

The odds of an airdrop in other available prediction markets on Polymarket followed suit.

A market that allows users to bet on an OpenSea token airdrop before April 2025 is currently trading at 82% in favor. Only $50,000 has been wagered on the market thus far.

As for the success of the token? More than $2 million has been wagered on Polymarket in a market predicting whether or not an OpenSea token would trade at a fully diluted valuation of more than $1 billion one week after it launches.

Odds on the market have dropped 5% in the last week, with traders pricing the likelihood at 56%. The market will resolve to 50-50 if a token is not launched by December 31, a feat that seems increasingly unlikely.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

Editor’s note: This story was originally published on December 18, 2024 and last updated with new details on December 20.