OpenSea is not trying to live only as a place people remember from the past. $NFT boom. At Consensus Miami on Thursday, Adam Hollander, the company’s chief marketing officer, told Karnika E. Yashwant, also known as Mr. Key, founder and CEO of KEY Difference Media, that OpenSea is currently building around NFTs, meme coins, criminals, and major cryptocurrencies within one non-custodial app.
At the beginning of the interview, Mr. KEY asked Adam to explain how he got here, asking, “How did you get here? What are you doing?”
Adam said he first started a software company, sold it to Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), and then spent years learning how products were built and sold on a larger scale.
He explained:
I left Microsoft and moved back to Austin, Texas, where I worked as the Chief Operating Officer for a medical education company for four and a half years. I then spent a few years as a collector, trader, went deeper into the rabbit hole of NFTs and digital ownership, and began to become a public evangelist for many of the technologies we all believe in and are excited about to this day. And a little over a year ago, I was talking with Devin, the CEO of OpenSea, and I decided to join them as their chief marketing officer.
Adam says OpenSea is trying to make cryptocurrencies available without requiring users to learn the entire chain.
Adam said most people at the event would still call OpenSea the world’s largest. $NFT But the product has actually changed a lot.
“You can now trade major cryptocurrencies. You can now trade memecoins and purp across 26 chains,” Adam said. He added that users can do so without bridging while keeping their wallets, assets and chains together in one portfolio.
Adam said the new OpenSea is built for people interested in keeping their assets rather than leaving everything inside a closed app. “If you value cryptocurrencies and non-custodial ownership of your assets, OpenSea is the perfect place to discover, own, and trade anything on-chain.”
Adam said the idea behind digital ownership has always been strong, but many buyers in 2021 and 2022 weren’t buying for art, community, access or practicality, but rather betting that others would pay more for them later.
But the real point is being able to prove ownership of a digital asset, see where it came from, and track its history over time.
KEY then asked, “So how long has OpenSea’s new product rollout been in the works?” According to Adam, OpenSea rebuilt the platform from the ground up through OS2 about a year ago. That’s because the older version wasn’t built for the kind of products the company needs today.
Adam said Reset is all about the rails. “We realized that the foundation of OpenSea, the rails behind everything, was not built in the original version of OpenSea to do everything I just described,” he said. “So it has become very complex because it requires additional pillars of how people discover, trade, and own things on-chain.”
OpenSea Mobile incorporates Apple Pay, beta testers and agent transactions into plans
Adam said the upcoming OpenSea Mobile app will make the broader strategy start to look more like a consumer product. He said the app creates a wallet in seconds, allows users to double-click Apple Pay through Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), convert fiat currency to cryptocurrency, and spend that cryptocurrency on 26 chains.
Adam said the point is not to take away privileges from advanced users. “The average person just needs to have some money and know they can go buy whatever they want,” he says.
KEY then asked, “Give me the numbers: What does it look like for users who are using this new aspect of the platform, as opposed to traditional users? $NFT By the way, all the new features you’re building, how many wallets are you creating, how much text? ”
Adam said he doesn’t have all the exact numbers off his head, but he does know that over 1 million wallets participated in OpenSea’s recent rewards program and that hundreds of thousands of unique users are active across the platform through token trading, NFTs and other products.
He also said the rewards program was discontinued about a month ago, so current users aren’t there just for that campaign.
KEY followed up on user composition and asked, “So for this first group of users, do we classify them as crypto people or as new people coming from outside?”
Adam said that most of the current users are already crypto natives and have brought their non-custodial wallets to OpenSea. But OS Mobile is aimed at people outside of that world.
Adam said about 600 beta testers have already tried OpenSea Mobile through hour-long, one-on-one sessions with the company’s marketing and engineering teams. “And we’ve been collecting that feedback to improve the product, determine the right positioning for the product, and make sure that when we release this to the public it’s really special,” Adam said.
KEY also asked if OpenSea’s discovery system is better than tools like DeBank and CoinStats, saying, “Do you think your discovery engine discovering all assets across all chains is better than DeBank or CoinStats or other applications?”
Adam said OpenSea has an advantage because it understands cultural on-chain behavior through NFTs and has “very strong recommendations.”
DeFi is not included in the initial release. KEY asked, “Did this work for DeFi as well?”
Adam said the app does not start with a DeFi connection, as it focuses on direct ownership of assets rather than transferring funds to the protocol to earn revenue. Perps is part of the app, but DeFi can be evaluated later, Adam said.
KEY then asked how OpenSea fits in as banks are also trying to reach consumers. Adam’s answer was that while most of these products are custodial, OpenSea is betting on user-owned wallets, open access to apps, and support for NFTs and tokenized assets outside of major cryptocurrencies and meme coins.
Adam said many large custodial crypto platforms still do not adequately support NFTs. That’s when his strongest line came out. “With a 100-foot pole, no one can touch it.”
KEY concluded by asking, “What do you think will happen over the next 1-2 years until we reach a bull market?”
Adam said launching the app is the next step, followed by marketing outside the current crypto bubble. He also said that OpenSea is gearing up for agent trading, with an MCP server and API that will allow agents to buy, sell, list, trade, and bid on NFTs, meme coins, and major cryptocurrencies.
