OpenSea acquires Gem, and Chess.com makes a move into NFTs

In a Monday Twitter post, OpenSea announced it had acquired nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace aggregator Gem for an undisclosed price. A blog post by OpenSea chief executive officer Devin Finzer stated that the company made this move to improve the experience of its more seasoned “pro” users.

Gem lets traders buy NFTs across various collections and multiple marketplaces in a single transaction that saves on gas fees. For now, OpenSea is adding popular Gem features such as its collection floor price sweeping tool and rarity-based rankings to its platform.

Gem will continue operating independently from OpenSea as a stand-alone product, but OpenSea intends to continually integrate more Gem features into its NFT marketplace in the future.

Many of the user comments on the Twitter thread, however, criticized OpenSea’s latest move. Amid multiple hacks and recent phishing scandals, collectors like @BandoNFT said he’d rather OpenSea invest to « improve communication and customer service. »

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