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 Supply-side fees Methodology

## 1. Overview

OpenSea supply-side fees represent royalties paid to NFT creators and collection owners through OpenSea marketplace transactions, excluding OpenSea's own protocol fees. The metric isolates the portion of total trading fees that flows to the supply side (creators) rather than the marketplace operator. This is calculated by identifying all OpenSea-attributable trades, extracting total fees, then subtracting estimated protocol fees to determine the royalty amounts paid to creators and collection owners.

## 2. Data sources

The calculation relies on several types of blockchain data and external sources:

- **Seaport protocol events**: Parsed `OrderFulfilled` events from Seaport versions V1.1 through V1.6 on Ethereum, containing trade execution details, offer/consideration arrays, and fee information
- **Seaport function traces**: `matchAdvancedOrders` and `matchOrders` function calls that identify batch/matched order scenarios
- **Wyvern protocol events**: Parsed `OrdersMatched` events from the legacy WyvernExchange contract containing historical trade data
- **Wyvern function traces**: `atomicMatch` function calls with trade parameters including fee tiers and recipient addresses
- **Ethereum transaction traces**: Raw transaction traces used to identify OpenSea-tagged transactions through specific input data patterns
- **End-of-day price feeds**: Token price data for USD conversion of fee amounts
- **Token metadata**: Token contract information including decimal places for accurate amount calculations

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Transaction identification
- **Purpose**: Identify all transactions attributable to OpenSea marketplace activity
- **Logic**: Multiple identification methods are applied to capture different types of OpenSea trades. Transactions are classified as OpenSea-related if they contain fees sent to known OpenSea addresses (4 hardcoded addresses including wallets and fee accounts), have zones matching OpenSea owner IDs (8 hardcoded addresses), or contain specific transaction input tags (`360c6ebe`) that identify OpenSea website usage. This multi-layered approach ensures comprehensive capture of OpenSea trading activity across different protocols and time periods.
- **Key fields**: `transaction_hash`, `block_timestamp`, fee recipient addresses, zone identifiers, transaction input data

### Component B: Seaport trade processing
- **Purpose**: Extract fee and trade information from modern Seaport protocol events
- **Logic**: Processes `OrderFulfilled` events from Seaport V1.1-V1.6 by unnesting `offer` and `consideration` arrays to analyze each component of complex trades. Identifies fee payments by detecting consideration items that are currencies (item types 0 or 1) sent to recipients other than the main trade participants (offerer/recipient). Handles matched orders differently from single orders using detection logic that checks for batch transactions. Uses window functions to fill missing buyer, seller, and token address information within transaction groups. Converts null token addresses to WETH addresses for proper price conversion.
- **Key fields**: `offer` arrays, `consideration` arrays, `itemtype`, `recipient`, `amount`, `token`, `orderHash`

### Component C: Wyvern trade processing  
- **Purpose**: Extract fee information from legacy Wyvern protocol trades
- **Logic**: Joins `OrdersMatched` events with `atomicMatch` function calls to reconstruct complete trade information. Calculates fee tiers from function parameters (position 9 in uints array divided by 10,000 for basis points). Identifies fee recipients from address array positions 3 and 10. Estimates OpenSea protocol fees as 2.5% of trade price based on historical fee structure. Separates total fees into protocol fees (estimated 2.5%) and creator royalties (remainder), with logic that assumes no protocol fee if actual fee is below the 2.5% threshold.
- **Key fields**: `price`, `addrs` arrays, `uints` arrays, fee tier calculations, protocol fee estimates

### Component D: Fee classification and aggregation
- **Purpose**: Separate total marketplace fees into protocol fees and supply-side fees
- **Logic**: Combines fee data from both Seaport and Wyvern sources, then applies a subtraction methodology to isolate supply-side fees. Total fees include all payments to non-participant addresses identified as fee-related. Protocol fees are isolated by filtering for fees sent specifically to OpenSea addresses (for Seaport) or using the 2.5% estimation method (for Wyvern). The calculation removes duplicates and aggregates by transaction to ensure accurate fee amounts.
- **Key fields**: `fee_amount` from all sources, `protocol_fee_estimate_amount`, fee recipient classifications

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: Fee amounts from Seaport and Wyvern processing are combined using union operations, with protocol fees subtracted from total fees using negative amounts in the aggregation. This approach calculates supply-side fees as: total_fees - protocol_fees = creator_royalties
- **Currency conversion**: USD conversion applied using end-of-day token price feeds with decimal correction based on token metadata to ensure accurate monetary values
- **Time aggregation**: Daily aggregation using `timestamp_trunc` to day boundary, with sum aggregation across all fee amounts for each unique combination of chain, market sector, business segment, and token address
- **Final calculation**: The metric represents the daily sum of royalty payments to NFT creators and collection owners through OpenSea marketplace transactions, expressed in USD, excluding OpenSea's own protocol fees

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

Portion of fees distributed to service providers or supply-side participants.

OpenSea

Supply-side fees

Supply-side fees

Competitive landscape

Chain breakdown