OpenSea Switches to Seaport Protocol to Lower Ethereum Gas Fees

The world’s biggest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, has pushed Wyvern overboard, finding safe harbor in Seaport.

High gas fees on the Ethereum blockchain has been the subject of many discussions over the years. Traditional blockchains have been known to collapse under pressure during seasons of high demand. Notably, Yuga Labs’ recent Otherside mint had a staggering $123 million in gas fees.

To address the fee issue, OpenSea has migrated to a new smart contract – “Seaport Protocol,” a move the leading NFT marketplace believes will help its users save money on Ethereum gas fees.

OpenSea said that its 1.8 million users will be able to save roughly 35% on gas fees with the Seaport contract. Moreover, new accounts will no longer need to pay the one-time “setup fee” that the company previously charged.

“We estimate the new contract will save $460 million in total fees each year,” OpenSea said in a Twitter thread announcing the Seaport migration.

Seaport is a decentralized and open-source protocol that allows users to include multiple items in a single on-chain transaction. The protocol has been audited by Web3 security firms Trail of Bits and OpenZeppelin and is not exclusive to only OpenSea.

Prior to OpenSea’s migration, the NFT trading platform used the Wyvern protocol. However, the less-efficient protocol was exploited back in February in an off-platform phishing scam that led to the loss of $1.7 million.

Following the integration, OpenSea is now building a tool that will allow its customers to list multiple NFTs for sale at once and only pay a single gas fee for the batch of listing. The company also disclosed that further down the line, NFT collection owners will be able to include more than one payout address for sales and royalties.

Meanwhile, it is worth noting that as of June 21, lists and offers will no longer be added to the Wyvern protocol. By July 13, the platform will stop taking data from the protocol, which means that listings on the Wyvern contract will no longer be visible on the site.