Before learning how to buy NFT on OpenSea, first some background on what OpenSea is: OpenSea is the world’s largest peer-to-peer trading marketplace for NFT assets, including digital art, collectibles, metaverse lands, gaming assets, domain names, trading cards, and other virtual goods. It was founded in 2017 by Alex Atallah and Devin Finzer.
On the January 4, 2022, the company announced that they raised $300 million in Series C funding at a $13.3 billion valuation. The round was led by Paradigm and Coatue. At the time of writing, per dappradar statistics, the last 30-day trading volume on the marketplace is $3.28B. Brian Roberts, CFO of the company, hinted at an initial public offering (IPO) plan in a Bloomberg report in December 2021. Once public, everyone will be able to buy OpenSea stock.
OpenSea offers more than 80 million NFTs to over 600,000 users. NFTs include ERC-721 and ERC-1155 tokens.
It’s the number one place to go if you’d like to purchase NFTs created on the Ethereum network, which stores the most exciting and lucrative projects in the NFT world.
How to Connect Your Wallet to OpenSea
First of all, to buy an NFT from the OpenSea marketplace, you must connect your crypto wallet (such as the Coinomi wallet) to the site. A crypto wallet allows you to buy, sell, store, or swap crypto assets. OpenSea accepts all major Ethereum wallets. If you haven’t already done it, the first thing you should do is install a wallet that OpenSea accepts. You can view the whole list here. The most popular Ethereum wallet is Metamask. You can download it as a browser extension by visiting metamask.io. Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Brave browsers are supported. After you install and set up your Metamask wallet, the next step is to add funds to make purchases. The following video explains these steps in detail:
Once your wallet is up and running, go to OpenSea.io. Click on the wallet icon found in the upper right corner, choose the wallet you’d like to connect and follow the instructions.
You’ll be requested to sign for approval. By signing, you confirm connecting your wallet to OpenSea. For detailed explanations on how to connect your wallet, you can watch the following video:
When your wallet is connected, you can create a username, write a bio, and add your social channel links. But these steps aren’t required to buy NFTs. Connecting a wallet is enough for that.
How to Search for NFTs
There are millions of NFTs on OpenSea. You should know about the searching and filtering options of the site to reach what you search.
If you know the name of the NFT collection or the artist, you can use the search bar. But be careful, because many projects have copycats. By mistake, you can choose the wrong project page. In fact, if you have got a specific project in mind, it’s better to follow the links found on the project’s official website or social channels.
Explore tab lists all NFT categories. For example, you can choose Collectibles to view only those NFTs listed under this category.
Another useful tool is the stats tab. Under this tab, you can see the collections that are the highest in demand and also the most recent activities of the site.
You can view the most popular projects in the last 24 hours, seven days, 30 days, or all time. (such as the Bored Ape Yacht Club) Besides volume, you can order results based on the floor price. You might find this option practical, especially if you have got an investment amount in mind and you’re waiting for the right moment to invest in a popular project. By comparing projects with similar floor prices, you can judge which ones are undervalued at that specific time.
You can filter the results based on the categories and the chain on which the NFT collection is based. OpenSea offers blockchain support across Ethereum, Polygon, and Klatyn networks.
To explore more filtering options, go to https://opensea.io/assets or simply click once on the search bar and enter.
The first filtering category is status with options “Buy Now,” “On Auction” “New,” and “Has Offers.”
As you can guess, “New” filters the results to the most recently added NFTs. “Has Offers” show those NFTs on which other buyers made bids.
“Buy Now” displays NFTs with fixed prices, while “On Auction” NFTs require making offers. These two will be the options you’ll probably use the most to discover NFTs.
Other filtering options are price, collections, chains, categories, and on sale in.
You can determine the range you’re willing to pay by using the price tab. You can enter the values either in USD or ETH. The collections tab includes all collections listed on OpenSea, so if you have a specific collection in mind, you can choose it from the drop-down menu. Chains include Ethereum, Polygon, and Klatyn networks as noted above and the categories tab is the same as the Explore drop-down menu as we discussed above.
The “On Sale In” option filters the results based on the currencies that are available to pay. Let’s dive a little deeper into that.
OpenSea Payment Methods
The most widely used currencies on OpenSea are ETH and WETH. But, depending on the NFT collection, other options are also possible.
For instance, some sellers prefer to sell in stablecoin currencies to protect their money against the high volatility of cryptocurrencies. That’s why you can buy from some projects using coins like USDC and DAI.
Some collections have their own native tokens that you can use to buy your NFTs. This is particularly the case with the NFT game projects.
Let’s say you’re considering buying an asset from the popular metaverse project the SandBox Game. To see what payment options are available to you, go to its official OpenSea page first and scroll down to see the options on the left-hand side.
Open the “On Sale In” tab. You’ll see that the SAND token, the project’s native in-game token, is among the options. Select it to see all the NFT assets offered in SAND.
You can explore your payment options in a similar vein for every OpenSea project.
How to Buy on OpenSea: Fixed-price NFTs
Using search options helps you discover new NFTs based on different parameters. Once you find the NFT you’d like to purchase, click on it to view its own page.
Let’s use the adidas Originals: Into the Metaverse NFT as an example. Every individual NFT page has two buying options: Buy Now and Make Offer. Choose “Buy Now” to purchase the NFT at the given price and follow the prompts in your wallet. Note there are OpenSea fees to be aware of. This means, in practice, you’ll always pay more than the sale price of the NFT.
How to Make Offers on OpenSea
You can try to buy NFTs less than the current fixed price by making offers. This especially makes sense for NFTs with multiple editions, as in the case of our example above. On OpenSea, you always see the most affordable fixed price on top. But not all owners put their assets on sale. There might be someone who’d be interested in your offer.
Choose the make an offer button. You’ll be prompted to select the currency with which you want to pay. The only three ways to make offers are WETH, USDC, and DAI. If you haven’t made any purchases with these currencies with your wallet before, you’ll have to pay a one-off gas fee.
How to Buy NFT on OpenSea Auctions
Some owners prefer to sell their NFTs on timed auctions, especially if NFTs are high in demand. There are two types of auctions: English auction and Dutch auction.
English auction: Highest bid wins at the end. OpenSea completes the transaction if the auction finishes above 1ETH. If it finishes below 1ETH, it’s up to the seller to take the highest bid or not. For an OpenSean NFT that should sell much higher than these price levels, sellers can set a minimum bid or reserved price, as in the case with the example below.
As a buyer, just like making offers on fixed price NFTs, you’ll need WETH to create your bid.
Each auction is extended by ten more minutes every time a new bid is made.
Dutch auction: Price declines until someone buys. They’re similar to fixed-price listings, except that the seller sets a beginning price and an end price for a fixed period, say 3 days. During this time, you can buy from the current price or make a bid.
Interested in making your own NFT? Check out this guide on How to Make an NFT.
OpenSea Fees
OpenSea runs on the Ethereum blockchain. This means, for every transaction, you must pay gas fees. Depending on the busyness of the network, these OpenSea fees can be very high, sometimes much higher than the price of the OpenSea NFT. As a buyer, gas fees at the time of purchasing should be your biggest concern. In addition, every time you use a cryptocurrency for trading for the first time, you pay gas fees for approval. Creating and canceling bids also require gas fees.
OpenSea sellers have to deal with many types of gas fees too. They must pay a one-time OpenSea fee to sell an NFT. Listing an auction, accepting a bid, canceling an NFT listing all require gas fees as well.
Apart from the gas fees, OpenSea fees include a 2.5% commission and 5-10% creator royalties from every transaction.
OpenSea Discord
OpenSea is the home for the most popular NFT collections. As its name suggests, it is immense. Sometimes you may find it complicated and need support. The best place to look for help can be the official OpenSea Discord channel. Here you may consult your fellow community members, follow important announcements regarding the marketplace and learn about the latest updates.
But, be wary of the scams while using OpenSean Discord because it’s also the scammers’ place to be. In the past, fraudsters invented fake OpenSea Discord customer support identities to exploit people’s trust in the marketplace. If you don’t want to fall victim to such events, always check you’re in the official OpenSea Discord channel and never share any information about your OpenSea account and wallet’s private keys with anyone.
Discord DM messages and chats can include malicious links. Be very careful about them and don’t click on any suspicious links.
Conclusions
Keep in mind that OpenSea acts as a secondary market. You must follow the release dates of the NFT collections you like to buy from the first market through their official channels and websites.
Note also that OpenSea is open to everyone to mint, create, and list NFTs. It’s possible that fake projects are listed on the marketplace. It can be a good practice to buy only from the verified collections and artists, especially if you’re a beginner.