Top Crypto News Today: OpenSea announces support for NFTs minted on Ethereum Roll-Up Arbitrum

In a step ahead for inclusivity and an open market, top NFT marketplace, OpenSea has announced that it is extending its support for NFTs minted on Ethereum roll-up Arbitrum.

1/ We’re excited to share that OpenSea will soon support @arbitrum! 💙🚀

This is a first step in building our goal of a web3 future where people have access to the NFTs they want on the chains they prefer.

— OpenSea (@opensea) September 20, 2022

OpenSea in a series of tweets said that it’s planning to support several collections already minting on Arbitrum, including Smolverse, GMX Blueberry Club and Diamond Pepes.

2/ We’re now almost ready to onboard amazing collections like @smolverse, @GBlueberryClub, and Diamond Pepes by @dopex_io onto OpenSea. After working with the @arbitrum team and several projects on the chain, we can’t wait to meet the rest of the community!

— OpenSea (@opensea) September 20, 2022

It must be noted however that OpenSea already hosts NFTs minted on multiple platforms such as Ethereum, Polygon, Klaytn and Solana. But this is significant because according to data from NFT Scan, NFTs on Arbitrum have a lifetime volume of only 9722 ETH which is a far cry from Ethereum’s NFT volumes of roughly 23.5 million ETH. But this decision to include NFTs on Arbitrum comes just after the successful implementation of the Ethereum Merge which happened on 15 September, 2022. With the Merge successfully underway, the need for roll-ups like Arbitrum would reduce over time as Ethereum itself is working on its own scaling solutions to reduce costs and increase transaction speeds.

Despite the remarkably lower NFT trading volumes on the Arbitrum roll-up, the decision to add support for these NFT would be hugely beneficial for artists on Arbitrum who want to create digital assets at a cheaper cost and possibly have a better ROI going forward, than the usually popular ones.

Along the same lines, OpenSea, in its Twitter thread said that it is excited about its ability to offer creators on other platforms to mint their digital assets and sell them. 

3/ Our plan is to launch @arbitrum on OpenSea tomorrow (9/21). After launch, creators will need to find their collections in OpenSea and set their creator fees directly. We encourage creators to do this at launch to be ready for any new transactions.

— OpenSea (@opensea) September 20, 2022

Thus overall, this move by the top NFT marketplace to include would bring about more mass adoption and inclusivity amongst the crypto folk and creators in the blockchain space alike to share their ideas and create a truly decentralised internet and usher in the era of Web3.

It is also interesting to note that this kind of move by an NFT marketplace, and arguably the biggest one by far as of now, will help, in whatever small way, to get back some of the trading volumes that these marketplaces have lost in the current cycle of the bear market. For context, back in January 2022, OpenSea had recorded NFT trading volumes of nearly $4.8 billion, which currently stands at less than half a billion as of writing.

Thus bringing onboard more and more is a win-win situation for both creators and marketplaces. When the bull market resumes eventually after the inevitable end of the bear market, all of these market participants will be able to rise back up together.