[1][2] OpenSea offers a marketplace online allowing for non-fungible tokens to be sold directly at a fixed price, or through an auction.

[7] In August 2021, the value of monthly transactions spiked to $3.4 billion, and in November OpenSea had 1.8 million active users.

[10] In May 2023, Chastain was convicted of wire fraud and money laundering in federal court and later sentenced to three months in prison.

[11] In January 2022, the company was valued at $13.3 billion and was described by The New York Times as being "one of the most talked-about blockchain start-ups in Silicon Valley".

[16][17] On January 27, 2022, OpenSea announced it would limit how many NFTs a user could create using the free minting tool.

[19] The company stated that its initial decision was based on concern about theft, plagiarism, and spam,[18] as 80% of the NFTs removed from OpenSea for violations were minted using the tool.

[21] The next day, The Verge reported that hundreds of NFTs were stolen from OpenSea users causing a huge panic among the platform community.

Later, in March 2021, OpenSea announced NFT collections would not need to be approved to be listed; this decision was later criticized for allowing rampant plagiarism on the platform.