Have you ever heard of Ethereum Name Service (ENS)? If so, do you know what year ENS opened their IPO? Brian Roberts, a new CFO hired by OpenSea, claimed to be working on the company's impending IPO. Let’s find out more about “what year did ENS open their IPO?” and about OpenSea’s IPO updates.
The news has disturbed some NFT collectors, who feel that OpenSea ought to instead introduce a token. One query has been circulating among OpenSea's most active users during the current spike in NFT trading volume: would they finally receive an airdrop of tokens?
Some fervent supporters of cryptocurrencies worry that an OpenSea token won't materialize now that the company has indicated plans for an initial public offering (IPO), and they are speaking out about it. OpenSea has announced today that it has hired Brian Roberts, who formerly held the same position at ride-hailing company Lyft, as its Chief Financial Officer. Bloomberg reported that Roberts, who assisted Lyft with its IPO, is already preparing for the IPO of the NFT marketplace.
He said that it "would be well-received in the public market given its growth" and that it "would be silly not to think about going public when you have a firm rising as quickly as this one." Regarding the general popular response, he might be correct. The well-known cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase went public in April, sparking a flurry of interest and investment and earning praise as the most thrilling IPO in years. At launch, Coinbase (COIN) destroyed the NASDAQ's reference price, demonstrating that Wall Street was prepared for cryptocurrencies (and vice versa).
However, not everyone was happy to see a crypto-focused business choose the conventional IPO path. Olaf Carlson-Wee, Coinbase's first employee and current CEO of Polychain Capital, stated to Decrypt in May that he believed the exchange could have considerably increased its value by creating and selling its own Ethereum coin.
Other cryptocurrency natives are regretting the NFT exchange's apparent plans to reject community ownership via a governance token after hearing of OpenSea's forthcoming IPO aspirations (i.e., one that grants users certain privileges, such as voting rights).
DeFiance Capital founder Arthur Cheong commented, "Imagine being the largest and most successful NFT marketplace yet deciding to go for IPO instead of issuing [a] token." "NGMI," or "not going to make it," was added.
For the avoidance of doubt, OpenSea has not formally declared that a token will not be issued. It might create a hybrid model that, for instance, combines a regular IPO with a particular kind of community token. Some analysts, however, believe that OpenSea has chosen regular corporate governance over a decentralized, token-driven approach because of the IPO rumors.
It's not a brand-new idea. Rarible, a rival NFT marketplace, has set itself apart in part by introducing the RARI governance token, which compensates producers and collectors for utilizing the platform. Similar actions were taken by SuperRare in August with its RARE token.
Before today's OpenSea IPO talk, Alexei Falin, CEO and co-founder of Rarible, He argued that the rival marketplaces have different goals. Falin said to Decrypt, "We take a slightly different approach to OpenSea. We are working to become a Web3-native company that is as decentralized as possible.
In November, the cryptocurrency project Ethereum Name Service (ENS) airdropped millions of governance tokens into the wallets of early adopters. The market capitalization of distributed tokens reached $1 billion in a matter of days. According to CoinGecko, the market capitalization after dilution is currently $4.7 billion.
Some people in the cryptocurrency business are persuaded that the top exchange, which recently handled NFT trading volume worth billions of dollars each month, has taken its choice in light of today's OpenSea IPO speculation. Additionally, in their opinion, it is not in favor of decentralization and local control.
