Opensea Acquires Dharma Labs, Co-Founder Is Named New CTO

Opensea, one of the biggest NFT marketplaces globally, recently announced it is acquiring Dharma Labs. The price is believed to be between $110 million and $130 million. As a result of the new agreement between the two companies, Nadav Hollander, a co-founder at Dharma Labs, will become the new chief technology officer (CTO) at Opensea.

Opensea’s New Valuation

One of the leading marketplaces for NFTs globally, Opensea recently confirmed it is acquiring the defi crypto wallet startup Dharma Labs. The acquisition of Dharma Labs for a price thought to be between $110 million and $130 million, comes shortly after Opensea’s successful seed round which saw its value surge to $13.3 billion.

Following the acquisition, Opensea will move to shut down Dharma Labs’ app in what a Techcrunch reports calls a controversial move. In addition to shutting down the app, Nadav Hollander, a co-founder at Dharma Labs, will become the new chief technology officer (CTO) at Opensea. Hollander takes over from Alex Atallah who is now tasked with overseeing the development of the marketplace’s web3 and NFT ecosystem.

In a blog post that explains some of the leading NFT marketplace’s reasons for buying Dharma Labs, Opensea CEO Devin Finzer said:

Our teams share a vision that NFTs will be the cultural focal point of crypto’s adoption for years to come — and that vision can only be realized if using NFTs becomes easy & delightful for the average person.

Meanwhile, the report notes that some of the NFT marketplace’s users have become critical of what they view as Opensea’s overly centralized structure. Others have suggested that early users of the platform may not have benefited enough from the surge in Opensea’s valuation.

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Terence Zimwara

Terence Zimwara is a Zimbabwe award-winning journalist, author and writer. He has written extensively about the economic troubles of some African countries as well as how digital currencies can provide Africans with an escape route.