Fighting against Magic Eden? OpenSea acquires the startup team Rally to attack the meme coin market.

OpenSea is the global leader of the Ethereum NFT trading platform, but the rising star Magic Eden has quickly emerged in the Solana and multi-chain markets, posing a significant threat to OpenSea. To stabilize its market share and attract young memecoin players, OpenSea announced the acquisition of the Web3 startup Rally, which focuses on memecoin trading. This new acquisition signifies OpenSea’s strong desire to rapidly penetrate the broader memecoin market beyond just NFT trading, striving to transform from solely selling NFTs into a comprehensive trading market to compete with Magic Eden.

OpenSea’s acquisition of Rally has far-reaching implications.

Rally is known for its mobile development technology, claiming that users can use a native self-custody wallet for meme coin transactions. Rally’s features include a user-friendly interface that simplifies transaction operations for mobile users, seamlessly integrating social functions with token trading, providing real-time updates on meme coin activity status, allowing users to track coin prices and place orders for purchases at any time. This acquisition for OpenSea is not only a technical absorption but also a stepping stone to accelerate entry into the meme coin market.

OpenSea co-founder and CEO Devin Finzer stated that the acquisition of Rally will not only improve OpenSea’s user experience, but also strengthen OpenSea’s market position in emerging digital assets. The integration of Rally’s technology into OpenSea will provide more intuitive and convenient trading services, especially in mobile payment.

OpenSea personnel changes

Chris Maddern, the CEO of Rally, will serve as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of OpenSea. Maddern has deep expertise in Web3 product design and user experience, and he will play a role in future technological developments. Rally’s co-founder Christine Hall will join the OpenSea management team as the Chief Operating Officer (COO), responsible for overseeing the platform’s daily operations.

Magic Eden is rapidly developing across chains.

Magic Eden has rapidly emerged in the Solana ecosystem, undoubtedly bringing strong competitive pressure to OpenSea. Magic Eden holds over 90% market share in the Solana ecosystem and is actively expanding into other chain markets such as Bitcoin L2, Ordinals, and Ethereum. Its leading position on the Solana chain has gained it a large number of supporters and trading volume in the NFT market, quickly becoming one of the main platforms for NFT trading.

Magic Eden completed its Series B funding in 2022, raising $130 million, with a valuation reaching $1.6 billion that year. This indicates that although its market share is not as high as OpenSea, its growth potential should not be underestimated.

The era of meme coin wars has arrived.

Currently, OpenSea remains the largest and most influential NFT trading platform in the world, holding about 60-70% of the market share, especially dominating the Ethereum mainstream blockchain. In contrast, Magic Eden, although it has a smaller market share of about 15-20%, is experiencing remarkable growth. Particularly within the Solana ecosystem, it maintains a leading position and the platform has long begun expanding its business on other blockchains such as Bitcoin L2 and Ethereum. Magic Eden’s layout in the multi-chain market undoubtedly poses a challenge to OpenSea’s market share.

If OpenSea successfully integrates Rally’s technology, it can directly reap the benefits of Memecoin and quickly expand its market share, while also being able to counter the challenges from Magic Eden. On the other hand, if Magic Eden can maintain its advantages on Solana and other blockchains, it is still likely to capture a larger slice of the market.

This article strives to compete with Magic Eden? OpenSea acquires the startup team Rally to attack the meme coin market, first appearing in Chain News ABMedia.