Key points to remember
- Brian Roberts, chief financial officer of OpenSea, said the company had no immediate plans for an initial public offering.
- The chief financial officer told Bloomberg on Monday that the platform could go public, which drew heavy criticism.
- Roberts added that if there ever was an IPO, the platform would “seek to engage the community.”
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After receiving negative reactions from his community, OpenSea CFO Brian Roberts backtracked on his IPO plans.
Update on the OpenSea IPO
In a Message on TwitterBrian Roberts, chief financial officer of OpenSea, said the company had no immediate plans for an initial public offering.
OpenSea is the largest marketplace for NFT trading. Its newly appointed CFO told Bloomberg on Monday that the company plans to raise funds through an IPO. However, this revelation was criticized by members of the community.
After the backlash from the OpenSea community, Roberts, who was previously Lyft’s CFO, clarified that OpenSea is just thinking about going public and not actively planning it. Commenting on the question, Roberts said:
“Let me set the record straight: there is a big gap between thinking about what an IPO might look like and actively planning one.”
In the same tweet, Roberts added that if there was ever an IPO, the platform would “seek to engage the community.” However, the executive did not explain how his community can be involved.
Some NFT investors have lambasted OpenSea’s review of a traditional fundraising model rather than a Web3 model, with a number of community members outraged by what they see as a shift in focus from the OpenSea community towards institutional investors.
Roberts’ statement today has been interpreted by some to mean that a potential OpenSea airdrop and a governance model could still be considered. However, without confirmation from OpenSea, it is difficult to predict for sure.
If OpenSea were to do an IPO, that would mean the project would ditch the idea of an OpenSea token and operate more similarly to popular exchanges like Coinbase, whose $ 50 billion IPO made big hits. titles earlier this year. A token-free path means no airdrops or lucrative rewards for users, which is common among crypto projects seeking to achieve decentralized governance. Several prominent crypto projects, such as Ethereum Name Service (ENS), UniSwap, and dYdX, have dumped users in the past.
It will be interesting to see if OpenSea symbolizes the project and moves to DAO style governance or if it takes the traditional path of fundraising. In July, OpenSea raised $ 100 million in a round led by a16z for a valuation of $ 1.5 billion.
According to TokenTerminal, the platform generates monthly revenue of $ 55 million. It should be noted that for a very profitable company like OpenSea incorporated in the United States, it may be easier to issue an IPO than to issue a token and risk possible violations of securities law.
Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this article owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.
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