Sequoia Capital Reveals a Shortcoming in OpenSea’s Dominance

Despite OpenSea dominating 43% of the entire NFT market, with $23.3 billion in total sales, the platform has its own shortcomings according to Shaun Maguire, a partner at venture capital firm Sequoia Capital. The reason for this being OpenSea relying on a less efficient blockchain- Ethereum, as told by Maguire to Bloomberg. Sequoia Invested in Solana-Based NFT Marketplace Sequoia Capital recently invested in Magic Eden, an NFT marketplace that uses Solana blockchain, also known as the Ethereum-killer which is capable of facilitating many more transactions at once than Ethereum and at a much cheaper cost. On Monday, Magic Eden announced raising a $27 million round of funding from Sequoia and other investors. The company declined to disclose its valuation, though it’s much less than the $13 billion OpenSea got from investors in January, Bloomberg reported. While Magic Eden is a popular venue for NFT trading, it’s only the ninth-largest NFT marketplace, according to data from DappRadar. However, Zhuoxun Yin, a former Coinbase product manager, co-founded Magic Eden last year believes Solana’s advantage over Ethereum will play well in video games, where NFTs are likely to be traded frequently. “Gaming NFTs will be on places like Solana. They’re not going to be on Ethereum,” Yin stated. Magic Eden Has 55 employees across the world and will open its first office next month in San Francisco. It also created a decentralized autonomous ...