Devin Finzer is the CEO of OpenSea, a popular hub throughout 2021 for the creation and trade of nonfungible tokens. Finzer started up the Ethereum-based platform in 2017 with co-founder Alex Atallah.
Finzer’s background includes multiple notable stopping points following his attendance at Brown University where he focused on math and computer science. He interned at Google as a software engineer, and later served the same role at Pinterest.
In 2015, Finzer co-founded a project called Claimdog — a solution aiming to help people receive owed funds. The project was a hit, at least according to Credit Karma, which bought Claimdog in 2016.
Nonfungible tokens received raging attention in 2021, similar to 2020’s DeFi boom and 2017’s initial coin offering craze. NFTs are unique, blockchain-based tokens that have a range of use cases, with OpenSea targeting the art and collectibles marketplace niche.
NFTs were selling for millions of dollars each in 2021. Perhaps the most exuberant — an NFT called “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” from artist Mike Winkelmann — fetched about $69 million. Numerous celebrities also became involved in the niche in varying capacities. OpenSea was a focal platform for NFTs in 2021, hosting approximately $14 billion worth of volume over the course of the year. Seeing a chunk of the action, the month of December in 2021 yielded $3.25 billion of volume on OpenSea.
As of August, just 37 people manned the highly trafficked OpenSea ship. In December, the project announced bringing Brian Roberts — whose experience includes time as Lyft’s chief financial officer — aboard as its chief financial officer.
Mainstream tech powerhouse Adobe unveiled partnerships with OpenSea and others in October 2021, providing greater potential for verifying an NFT’s authenticity. OpenSea also came forward with a number of other announcements in 2021, such as unveiling its mobile app and upgrading the platform in various ways.
OpenSea’s 2021 was not all sunshine and roses, however. Information came to light in September of an OpenSea employee using their position in the company to profit. The employee allegedly bought and sold certain NFTs based on knowledge gained from working at OpenSea — knowledge the public was unaware of. OpenSea addressed the situation head-on, with Finzer releasing a company blog post notifying the public of the situation, OpenSea’s plans forward, and the employee’s departure from the company.
2022 started off with forward progression for OpenSea. In January, it revealed its acquisition of wallet and DeFi solution Dharma Labs, with Dharma’s two co-founders filling the roles of chief technology officer and head of strategy at OpenSea.
Will the exuberance of NFTs persist in 2022? If the year is anything like 2021, then it may include continued attention on NFTs, with potentially expanding use cases for the digital token class. In that case, OpenSea may see continued growth and volume as it caters to the NFT crowd. With Finzer heading the OpenSea project, the market could logically see his continued participation in the NFT subset of the crypto industry.
At the tail-end of 2021, based on comments from Roberts that were taken the wrong way, misunderstanding spread regarding OpenSea’s supposed intention of going public in 2022. Clarification yielded that no such plans existed at the time of his comments.
In February 2022, NFTs valued at about $1.7 million were pilfered from OpenSea users via a phishing campaign. The phishing scam took advantage of OpenSea’s system upgrade at the time that required users to move their NFT listings.
Exchanges
