Originally :

The recent OpenSea launch of seaport is a masterstroke.

Web3 moats are in composability traction; not (just) user traction.

Firstly, the protocol launch context

https://opensea.io/blog/announcements/introducing-seaport-protocol/?amp=1

https://github.com/ProjectOpenSea/seaport

Why give away everything for free, when you could have milked profits by owning the IP?

OpenSea words the Seaport as a way to build with the community and support a generation of builders and developers. Though it may sound altruistic, it is actually in the best interest of their business to do this. Everyone wins. That’s web3.

OpenSea ofcourse is a marketplace. it’s built on top of the erc721. In many ways OpenSea implements what the 721 standard prescribes. Launching a protocol, it takes the entire narrative from standard definition to user experience in its own hands.

Now seaport is likely to become a standard for token marketplace. Because of OpenSea itself building on these open standards. Developers around the world will innovate and build even cooler stuff on top of this protocol. They’ll compose. When more people compose, more “standardised” the standard becomes. The foundations on which OpenSea was built, is getting stronger. This is critical, especially in a market of fast changing technology.

NFT itself is beginning to take various shapes and directions. OpenSea bet on NFTs being tradable assets, POAP bet on NFT as credentials, we’re now seeing soul bound NFTs as Sybil resistance measures. All these NFT usecase ofcourse compete for the same nft standard’s evolution.

OpenSea can’t risk

  1. Slowing down innovation on tradable NFTs because of infighting
  2. NFTs losing focus as a tradable asset (as in soul bound)

With Seaport, OpenSea has taken the tradable NFTs & marketplace standard into its own hands.

It will define the standard, OpenSea will implement that standard and reap the rewards. Though, I’m sure there is going to be a better way to capture the value from the seaport protocol.

But all this value is not speculative. It has already manifested in code

https://github.com/ProjectOpenSea/seaport/blob/09679c4a6a81552b1f31dd14a832e300636315be/contracts/lib/BasicOrderFulfiller.sol#L634

Here you can see tipping already implemented in the above link.

But the discussions are happening here to make it a standard : https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-4393 (EIP 4393)

EIP 4xxx are likely to go through in about 2-3 years

By launching their own protocol, OpenSea has

  1. Shortcircuited innovation by 2-3 years on multiple axes
  2. Taken control of the standards
  3. Consolidating the tech it is building on, by inviting composability
  4. Opening up to new forms of value capture at protocol level

Web3 is about composability.