Why a ‘Mobile-First’ Mentality Drove OpenSea’s Latest Acquisition

Distinguished NFT market OpenSea introduced Tuesday that it acquired cell token buying and selling and portfolio administration app Rally (previously Ground) in an effort to construct “the on-chain every thing app.”

As a part of the acquisition, Rally co-founders Chris Maddern and Christine Corridor—the latter the previous COO at Robinhood Crypto—will be part of OpenSea’s government crew, with Maddern taking the position of chief expertise officer and Corridor turning into OpenSea’s chief of employees. Particulars of the deal weren’t disclosed.

OpenSea commanded a lot of the buying and selling quantity through the explosive NFT buying and selling increase of 2021 and 2022. Whereas NFT demand has plunged since then, OpenSea is endeavor a full transformation this 12 months, unveiling its OS2 platform full with fungible token buying and selling and asserting help for an upcoming SEA token that may come from the OpenSea Basis.

“OpenSea right now has lots of of 1000’s of energetic NFT merchants with related wallets who belief OpenSea as their portal to Web3.” Maddern instructed Decrypt. “All through 2025, we’ll develop our relationship with these customers to increase the forms of actions they do on OpenSea.”

Maddern added that token buying and selling has been “by far our fastest-growing exercise.” With its newest acquisition, the platform seems prime to increase even additional with a specific deal with the cell expertise. 

“We’re reimagining cell from the bottom as much as create a product that brings tokens and NFTs collectively in a magical approach—a single dwelling for on-chain crypto in your telephone,” Corridor instructed Decrypt. “We count on that whereas our quantity will develop extra shortly on desktop, cell will massively outpace desktop for client development.”

As a part of its efforts to create an every thing app for crypto customers, Maddern highlighted just a few pre-requisites the corporate might want to handle past cell, together with making decentralized finance (DeFi) and perps easy and accessible, together with embracing AI. 

“Customers are in search of a single, easy place to have the ability to uncover and interact with on-chain property—OpenSea might be that place,” mentioned Maddern. “The way forward for Web3 might be mobile-first, as a result of that’s how individuals work together with every thing else of their digital lives.”

Rally started as an NFT portfolio app, permitting customers to maintain monitor of their NFT efficiency through a local cell app. As Ground, the agency raised $8 million in June 2022 and ultimately rebranded to Rally in September 2024, because it had expanded into extra on-chain actions like meme coin buying and selling and efficiency. 

For the foreseeable future, Maddern mentioned that customers can use the Rally app as they sometimes would, with a migration path to the reimagined OpenSea cell expertise coming later this 12 months.

OpenSea first launched its authentic cell app again in 2021 through the peak of the NFT buying and selling frenzy. The platform has as soon as extra claimed the lead in Ethereum NFT buying and selling market share, capturing greater than 50% within the final 3 months in response to information from Tiexo. OpenSea had beforehand misplaced market share lately to buzzy rivals like Blur and Magic Eden.

In February, OpenSea co-founder and CEO Devin Finzer mentioned that the SEC could be ending its investigation into {the marketplace}, which centered on the potential classification of NFTs as securities. That transfer added to a string of dropped investigations and lawsuits since Donald Trump took workplace.