Creators & users sell NFTs on OpenSea. They receive royalties from secondary sales (supply-side fees).

OpenSea is a non-custodial NFT marketplace protocol built on Ethereum. OpenSea was founded by Alex Atallah & Devin Finzer and launched in 2017.

OpenSea team & investors own and govern the protocol. They currently take a cut of the total transaction fees paid by buyers (revenue). OpenSea's investors include a16z, Coatue, Founders Fund, etc.

github

twitter

discord

website

NFT marketplaces

OpenSea

# OpenSea Expenses Methodology

## 1. Overview

OpenSea expenses represent the token incentives paid out by OpenSea to users of their NFT marketplace platform. This metric measures the costs incurred by OpenSea in the form of token rewards, cashback, or other incentive programs designed to attract and retain users. Currently, OpenSea does not operate any token incentive programs, resulting in zero expenses across all time periods and chains.

## 2. Data sources

The methodology uses the following data sources to establish the dimensional structure:
- **Ethereum Seaport contract events**: `OrderFulfilled` events from Seaport protocol versions 1.1 through 1.6, which contain trading activity and fee information
- **Ethereum WyvernExchange events**: `OrdersMatched` events from the legacy WyvernExchange protocol version 1.0
- **Ethereum transaction data**: WyvernExchange `atomicMatch` function calls and general transaction traces
- **Transaction identification data**: Ethereum transaction traces containing OpenSea's website identifier tag
- **End-of-day token price feeds**: Price data for USD conversion and standardization
- **Token metadata**: Decimal precision information for proper amount calculations

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Fee structure extraction
- **Purpose**: Establishes the dimensional framework (timestamps, chains, products) for the expenses metric
- **Logic**: The system processes OpenSea's fee collection activity to create a consistent dimensional structure. This involves extracting trading events from Seaport protocols (versions 1.1-1.6) and the legacy Wyvern Exchange protocol. The system identifies legitimate OpenSea transactions through multiple methods: fees sent to known OpenSea addresses, protocol-owned zones, and transactions containing OpenSea's website tag. Trading fees are aggregated daily by chain and converted to USD using end-of-day price feeds
- **Key fields**: `timestamp` (daily aggregation), `chain_id` (blockchain identifier), `product_id` (marketplace segments), `token_address` (fee payment tokens)

### Component B: Token incentive calculation
- **Purpose**: Calculates the actual token incentives paid out by OpenSea to users
- **Logic**: The system sets token incentive amounts to zero for all time periods and dimensional combinations. This reflects OpenSea's current business model where they collect fees from users rather than paying out token rewards or incentives. The calculation inherits the dimensional structure from the fee collection system to ensure consistency across metrics
- **Key fields**: `token_incentives` (set to zero), `timestamp` (daily grain), `chain_id`, `product_id`

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: The token incentives (zero values) are structured using the same dimensions as the fee collection system to maintain metric consistency
- **Currency conversion**: USD conversion is applied using end-of-day token price feeds and decimal corrections, though values remain zero
- **Time aggregation**: Daily aggregation boundaries are maintained, with data organized by blockchain and marketplace segment
- **Final calculation**: Expenses equal token incentives, which are currently zero across all dimensions. The final output includes standardized fields for timestamp, chain identification, product segmentation, and zero expense amounts in both native tokens and USD

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

Total project operating and incentive expenses.

OpenSea

Expenses

Expenses

Competitive landscape

Chain breakdown