OpenSea Update Leaves Some Creators Unable to Mint New NFTs

By Dale Warburton January 29, 2022 In Crypto News, NFTs

In 2021, NFT platform OpenSea recorded over US$14 billion in transaction volume, an increase of 646 times over 2020. Unfortunately, its user experience hasn’t come close to its financial performance, as the exchange has experienced one PR disaster after the next.

The latest relates to a limitation on the number of NFTs a creator can mint:

OpenSea, One Drama After the Next

Over the past six months alone, Crypto News Australia has reported on several instances where OpenSea ended up with egg on its face. These include:

More Drama, Like a JPEG Soap Opera

Yesterday, OpenSea announced it had “updated our collection storefront contract limits” to only allow five collections per NFT wallet or user, and a maximum of 50 NFTs in each collection. Recognising that the community might not like it, the platform got on the front foot:

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We know this change may impact our community, so please don’t hesitate to share how this affects your creative flow.

OpenSea via Twitter

Within hours, the NFT community was up in arms, with users calling it “unnecessary”, among other less cordial terms:

As some creators noted, for those who had already minted 50 or more in an existing collecting, they were unable to continue and deliver on promises made to prospective investors:

This is probably the worst response to some pretty wonderful competition emerging and others opening up just around the corner. Very sad to see. For me personally, I wouldn’t even care if they [OpenSea] reversed this one hour later. The fact that they would put this out there and let people wake up to it – I’m done with them.

David Horvath, Uglydoll co-founder

OpenSea Backtracks

In virtually no time, OpenSea did a complete 180 on its position, saying:

In a Twitter thread, it explained that the limitation was imposed to reduce plagiarism on the platform, but that it “should have previewed this with you before rolling it out”.

Considering OpenSea’s 2.5 percent fee, you’d imagine that at least part of its US$350 million in revenue in 2021 could go to some good PR management and training.

Dale Warburton
Author

Dale Warburton

Dale is a former attorney turned passionate Bitcoiner with an interest in investments, macro, geopolitics, innovation, tech, nature, wildlife, MMA and Bitcoin (of course).

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