OpenSea abandons IPO plans after community backlash

OpenSea, the world's top NFT marketplace, has denied that it intends to seek a public listing anytime soon.

Chief financial officer (CFO) Brian Roberts told Bloomberg this week that "it would be foolish not to think about going public," sparking public backlash.

The statement caused an uproar in OpenSea’s crypto-native NFT community, with many seeing the platform’s public listing as a sellout to large institutional investors. The vast majority of users on OpenSea perform transactions below $10,000 per transaction.

“Sucks to hear @opensea is selling stock and doing an IPO,” Twitter user @Punk_2070 wrote, complaining that the community, not VCs, drove its success.

“Another reason why I can’t wait for the @Coinbase_NFT. If we’re using a corporate car, we might as well use the one that doesn’t break down 3 times a week.”

Users also seemed disaffected, arguing that the stock market listing would dispel rumors that the platform plans to airdrop governance tokens to longtime community members in a manner similar to Uniswap.

But Roberts apparently believes the whole thing was a misunderstanding, blaming "inaccurate reporting" on Opensea's plans to go public in a Dec. 8 tweet.

"Let me be clear: there's a big gap between thinking about what an IPO might end up looking like and actively planning an IPO. We have no plans to go public, and if we did, we would seek community involvement."

Whether managed by the community or listed on the stock market, the NFT market is red hot, with 1.1 million transactions and nearly 250,000 users recording a transaction volume of $2 billion in the past 30 days alone. The platform takes a 2.5% cut of each transaction, meaning it raked in more than $50 million during that time period.

Roberts became OpenSea's first chief financial officer after resigning from Lyft earlier this week. He is experienced in technology and retail, having previously worked at Walmart and Microsoft.