Non-fungible token (NFT) exchange OpenSea sparked speculation it is preparing a potential token airdrop after it registered an entity in the Cayman Islands.
X user Waleswoosh, a pseudonymous researcher at Azuki, posted a screenshot of the OpenSea registration. The registration was present on the Cayman Island's general registry and was also confirmed to CoinDesk by OpenSea.
The post led to speculation over whether the move was a step toward releasing a token in a more crypto-friendly jurisdiction than the U.S. A dashboard created on Dune lets OpenSea users check their historical activity to estimate how much a potential airdrop might be worth.
OpenSea declined to comment on whether it would be introducing an native token.
The company is headquartered in New York and was the primary venue for the NFT bull cycle in 2022, racking up a record $2.7 billion of trading volume on a single day in May that year. The emergence of rival platform Blur coupled with a wider market decline resulted in a loss of market share. Trading volume over the past 24 hours hit $21 million, less than 1% of the record.
The company was valued at $13 billion after it raised $300 million during the height of the 2022 cycle. The market has now shifted, with focus on memecoins like dogwifhat (WIF) and bonk (BONK) rather than non-fungible token projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks.
OpenSea plans to turn the tide back in its favor this month as it rolls out OpenSea 2.0. More than 1 million unique wallets have registered for the waitlist.
The new platform features a "retro" section, which rewards users for historical activity in the form of "points." Points leaderboards have been a common way of airdropping tokens to users this year by incentivizing ongoing activity and loyalty. There's no indication that OpenSea plans to follow that path, however.