OpenSea Launches Seaport Marketplace Protocol Allowing NFT Bartering

NFT marketplace OpenSea has unveiled its new Web3 marketplace protocol, SeaPort, which allows NFT merchants to make direct trades with digital collectables’ buyers. Seaport will not be owned or operated by OpenSea; instead, it will be governed by smart contracts.

“Most current NFT marketplaces only allow for listings where one party agrees to supply an NFT and the other agrees to supply a payment token. Seaport takes a different approach: offeror can agree to supply a number of ETH / ERC20 / ERC721 / ERC1155 items — this is the “offer.” In order for that offer to be accepted, a number of items must be received by the recipients indicated by the offeror — this is the ‘consideration’.”

What makes Seaport different from any other marketplace is that users will be able to bundle different digital assets in an exchange for an NFT, unlike NFT marketplaces that only allow users to exchange crypto for buying NFTs. For instance, say you have a Bored Ape avatar NFT that costs 100 ETH, and you want to buy a 150 ETH worth doodle. In this case, you can offer your Bored Ape NFT worth 100 ETH and 50 ETH to the buyer and get hold of the NFT you want.

“Seaport also supports the option to fulfil any number of listings at once through a set of “fulfilments” — each fulfilment corresponds to a single item transfer and indicates a group of offer items that the submitter can match with corresponding consideration items. As long as each consideration item on each listing is fully credited after all fulfilments have been applied, the offerors can leverage their coincidence of wants and complete their transfers.”

In addition, the new system eliminates redundant transfers, which are usually the most gas-intensive, and allows for “novel and efficient transactions.”

Meanwhile, there are other tools like SudoSwap which lets a user barter for NFTs. However, this feature is now becoming native to OpenSea. “A fulfiller may include additional consideration items when fulfilling a listing as long as they do not “tip” more than the original offer,” said the statement from OpenSea. “This allows alternative interfaces to include their own fees.”

The NFT sector has witnessed major competition recently, with several well-known companies entering the space and aiming to improvise. With Seaport, OpenSea is looking to take advantage of the increasing popularity of NFTs and the various use cases they will inevitably have. OpenSea also recently acquired Gem, an NFT marketplace place aggregator, to further enhance user experience.