NFT marketplace acquires Dharma, a cryptocurrency lending platform and a digital wallet.
With the new acquisition, OpenSea is aiming to look at expanding what it can offer and rebuild itself as something much more than an NFT marketplace.
As OpenSea looks at increasing its technological prowess and capabilities, Dharma might provide it with the functionalities and resources that it might need. The acquisition has certainly created some headlines in the NFT space, however, the amount of acquisition stays undisclosed.
Let us find out what the entire story is, and what the future holds for the two prominent names in the NFT and crypto space.
OpenSea Acquires Dharma: The Details
The announcement of the acquisition came weeks after Axios’ co-founder apparently mentioned in one of its articles about the possible acquisition. While the acquisition’s final amount still remains undisclosed, the article mentions that the amount somewhere stands between $110 million to $130 million.
The largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea has decided to acquire the platform Dharma Labs and technically shut it down. Dharma’s co-founders, Nadav Hollander and Brendan Foster will operate as OpenSea’s chief technology officer and head of strategy respectively. With the new shift, the current CTO of the company and the co-founder Alex Atallah, has stepped into a new role, overseeing web3 and NFT ecosystem development efforts.
About Dharma Labs
Dharma Labs has been in the limelight since the news has popped out. Let’s find out more about the platform.
Dharma Labs is an Ethereum-based wallet that allows users to facilitate transactions between their bank accounts and decentralized exchanges. According to the company’s CrunchBase profile, the total funding amount of the platform before the acquisition stood at $7.1 million with investors like Coinbase Ventures, Y Combinator, Lemniscap, and more.
The platform, founded in 2017, was quite actively working on its vision to make the cryptocurrency ecosystem accessible to the masses.
As of now, the Dharma website states that it is shutting down in the next few days (live timer present on the website), asking users to transfer their funds to other NFT wallets. The website explicitly mentions that users cannot swap or purchase tokens on Dharma anymore. According to the note mentioned on the website, a user can transfer their assets to their banks, or sell them and Dharma will take care of the gas fees. Similarly, moving the tokens to other wallets has the same protocol.
For The Dharma Users
Dharma, conducting its due diligence has decided to ensure that each of its users gets to transition to either another wallet or to ensure their assets aren’t left behind on the platform.
The website mentions that the app will shut down on 18th February 2022. As per Dharma, the following options are available for its users till the final date
All transfers out of the wallet will be:
- Free on Ethereum if they are of size >$100*
- Free on Polygon regardless of size
All sales to bank account will be:
- Free on Ethereum if they are of size >$100*
- Free on Polygon regardless of size
- Swaps & purchases of crypto will be disabled
They further go on to mention that the users should utilize the 30 day onboarding period to its fullest and access their funds before the Dharma team renounce their control on the app.
OpenSea’s Take on The Acquisition
The largest NFT marketplace out there announced about the acquisition on the platform’s blog. The post goes on to mention the platform’s plan in the year 2022 after the preceding year turned out to be a year that really brought NFTs into the limelight.
The blog post mentions about the four core priorities that the brand will be focusing on, that is:
- Accelerating product development for the growing community
- Expanding on trust, safety, and reliability efforts
- Investing in web3 and NFT ecosystem
- Growing the team
Furthermore, the company clearly states that acquiring Dharma Labs is going to help them move forward on all four fronts. Both the brands believe in making the experience of buying an NFT easy and delightful for an average consumer, hence increasing awareness around NFTs and the crypto ecosystem.
The platform’s CEO in the blog post further concludes by saying that the world of NFTs and web3 overall is about being “open, community-led, and permissionless innovation and we’re doubling down on our contribution to that ethos.”
Conclusion
The NFT space has gained enough momentum in the year 2021. What everyone expects from this year is that NFTs will make their entry into the mainstream more conspicuous.
When it comes to NFT behemoths like OpenSea, we can expect more such news down the line as the bigger players rush to cement their space in the industry. OpenSea recently concluded a funding round, helping itself value at $13 billion. The marketplace was even able to start the year 2022 on a good note, with trades reaching $2.35 billion in volume, in January.
With Dharma under its belt, OpenSea has gained the technical know-how and access to banks that Dharma boasts of carrying on its platform. Moreover, efforts like the NFT Security Group, with members like Adobe, Alchemy, Coinbase, Nifty Gateway, and more, are going to make the entire ecosystem more secure and community-driven.
As NFTs take flight and gain popularity, platforms such as OpenSea are only going to benefit from it. But, who takes away the biggest chunk of the pie is yet to be seen.
