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

Three years after a peak in NFT mania that pushed monthly trading volume to billions of dollars Bored Ape Yacht Club on The tonight showcollectible tokens are gaining momentum again – and that includes the popular NFT marketplace OpenSea.

NFT trading volume recently hit a three-month highand after marketplace competitor Magic Eden completed its own ME airdrop, speculation about a potential OpenSea token is rising.

The market is teasing it or not and recently asked X followers (formerly Twitter): “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 that determine token airdrop allocations.

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

Here’s everything we know about OpenSea token odds and speculation surrounding the event.

OpenSea Foundation is created

The biggest piece of speculation about a possible OpenSea token airdrop comes from a recent application in the Cayman Islands for an ‘OpenSea Foundation’.

The filing sparked immediate intrigue among crypto participants, highlighted by a message from pseudonymous crypto personality Wale.Swoosh which racked up over 1.4 million impressions on X.

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

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

Recent examples include the ME Foundation for Magical Eden or the Movement Network Foundation for the Ethereum Layer-2 networking movement.

An OpenSea spokesperson confirmed this Declutter that the foundation is indeed a registered entity, but did not comment further on any association with OpenSea.

That association became a little clearer on December 20 when a X account called OpenSea Foundation posted “Ocean enters the chat,” possibly teasing an OCEAN token.

The account, created in May 2024, follows only one account on the platform: OpenSea. Both OpenSea and its CEO, Devin Finzer, responded to the post via their respective accounts.

Although details are still scarce, an OpenSea Foundation spokesperson said Declutter“More soon.”

OpenSea 2.0 teases

While many NFT traders have urged OpenSea to drop a token in recent years, speculation around a potential token increased in November.

At that time, OpenSea opened a waiting list for one completely redesigned marketplace called OpenSea 2.0, after the former NFT platform downsized its team in an effort to be more agile and rethink its model.

“We cooked quietly at OpenSea,” said OpenSea CEO and co-founder Devin Finzer posted on X. “To really innovate, sometimes you have to take a step back and rethink everything.”

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

In a thread that has been viewed more than 360,000 times on X, a pseudonymous beta tester named john.weth said showed a ranking and point farming activity, suggesting that there would be retroactive rewards – although ‘how and what measure’ was yet to be determined.

OpenSea 2.0 was previously expected to launch sometime in December 2024, but on the last day of the year, Finzer tweeted that the beta was “entering home” and that it would be “fun over the next few weeks.”

However, Finzer also quickly dispelled speculation surrounding the airdrop criteria. In response to a viral tweet suggesting that OpenSea’s token would mainly benefit recent users, rather than those during the 2021-2022 NFT market bull run, Finzer replied“This kind of disinformation hurts Web3, and is even sadder when it is coordinated. None of this is true.”

Traders place their bets

While details surrounding a token launch are unknown, crypto gamblers believe there is a strong chance of an OpenSea airdrop, according to a prediction market on Polymarket.

A market that allows users to bet on a OpenSea token airdrop before April 2025 currently trading at 65% upside. The figure is down from a record high of 84% in favor, but is still up more than 10% in the past month. During that time, the volume on the market has increased from approximately $50,000 to now over $83,000 in stakes.

A relatively new market opened up allowing users to bet about the success of a potential OpenSea token. Currently, just under $200,000 has been staked on Polymarket in a market attempting to predict the fully diluted valuation (FDV) of an OpenSea token one day after launch.

So far, crypto bettors point out that the token FDV is valued between $1-3 billion per day after launch, with a range of $5-10 billion and $3-5 billion behind that.

The market also gives a 10% chance that an OpenSea token will not be launched in July 2025.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

Editor’s note: This story was originally published on December 18, 2024 and last updated with new details on January 5, 2025.