I remember three years ago, NFTs were in the spotlight — Bored Ape Yacht Club was even featured on the Tonight Show, and trading volumes were counted in tens of billions. Now, history is repeating itself, but with a different scenario. The NFT market is gaining momentum again, and all attention is focused on OpenSea — the platform that was once the queen of this segment.

The most interesting developments began in December last year when OpenSea registered a fund in the Cayman Islands. This drew a lot of attention from the crypto community because such funds usually precede an airdrop of tokens. Competitors have already gone down this path — one of them distributed over $700 million in tokens to users, and another completed its airdrop months earlier. When OpenSea’s fund posted a message saying “the ocean is entering the chat” on X, it looked like a hint at an upcoming launch of their own token.

Meanwhile, OpenSea was working on a complete overhaul of the platform — OpenSea 2.0. CEO Devin Finzer spoke about the need to innovate and rethink everything from scratch. When the beta version opened, users started noticing leaderboards and scoring systems, clearly hinting at future rewards. Within a few weeks, over a million wallets had signed up for the waiting list.

Traders on Polymarket, meanwhile, were actively placing bets. By mid-December, the probability of an airdrop jumped from 20% to 60% in just one day. The market, where you could bet on the airdrop happening before April 2025, was trading at 82%. Even more interesting were bets on whether OpenSea’s token would be valued above one billion dollars within the first week after launch — over two million dollars were wagered on that.

So, the story of bored airdrops and other token drops showed: when a major platform starts preparing to launch its own token, the market feels it. OpenSea, having lost ground due to competition, tried to get back into the game through rethinking and, apparently, through a token. It’s just a pity that the details remain unclear, but the market has already made its choice.