OpenSea
Summary
OpenSea is the first decentralized, peer-to-peer marketplace for blockchain-based assets, which include crypto collectibles, gaming items, and other assets backed by a blockchain. The OpenSea team has backgrounds from Stanford, Palantir, and Google, and is funded by YCombinator, Founders Fund, Coinbase Ventures, 1Confirmation, and Blockchain Capital. OpenSea is currently the largest general marketplace for user-owned digital items, with the broadest set of categories (90 and growing), the most items (over 1 million), and the best prices for new categories of items. Since they launched their beta back in December, the site has had over 18,000 ETH pass through their market.
Developer partnerships
OpenSea partners with developers to power their marketplace directly on OpenSea's infrastructure. This allows developers to focus on the core functionality of their dapp, while benefiting from peer-to-peer trades on the marketplace as they receive a secondary sale fee any time one of their items is sold on OpenSea. OpenSea is currently the primary marketplace for Cheeze Wizards (a new game from Dapper Labs), MyCryptoHeroes (a Japanese RPG), the officially licensed Formula 1 racing game from Animoca Brands, and many others.
Architecture
OpenSea is powered by the Wyvern Protocol, a set of robust Ethereum smart contracts specifically designed for buying and selling unique digital assets.