With over $14 billion in transactions in 2021—646 times the previous year’s total—OpenSea has cemented its status as the world’s most popular marketplace for nonfungible tokens (NFTs), the blockchain-based technology that makes it possible to claim ownership over digital art, data, and more. “Beyond art and creative work, the use cases for NFTs are expanding to event ticketing, gaming, music, and fashion,” says CEO and co-founder Devin Finzer. “It’s possible that one day, nearly everything we own will be accounted for on the blockchain.” OpenSea’s meteoric rise—it now has more than 1 million users—hasn’t been entirely smooth; it’s working, for instance, to clamp down on people selling other artists’ intellectual property.
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