Ether.Fi said Tuesday that OpenSea, the most popular digital marketplace by number of traders, has stopped trading its deployed ether NFTs.
“We launched ether.fan, an NFT collection backed by staked ETH,” CEO Mike Silagadze said in an open letter published on Medium. “By all accounts, it was hugely successful. We hit all 3,000 NFTs in a day, with over 6,200 ETH in play.”
Silagadze went on to say that offers appeared on OpenSea “immediately”, after which Ether.Fi redirected to those listings for them to trade.
“Then we got a big blow. All listings on OpenSea disappeared,” Silagadze said in the letter. “New listings were apparently disabled (with a cryptic error message). We received no message or warning. None of the many people we spoke to at OpenSea had contacted. The collection was just inexplicably disabled.”
Silagadze said OpenSea eventually responded with a “form letter” explanation, with the market stating that it “does not allow NFT collections that ‘carry out financial activities subject to registration or licensing’.”
When asked for comment, OpenSea told The Block it would not comment on “enforcement actions” regarding specific collections.
“Our terms of service govern the type of content and conduct allowed on OpenSea,” an OpenSea spokesperson said by email. “When we determine that collections or content violate our Terms of Service, we enforce our policies in a variety of ways, including removing collections and, in some cases, banning accounts.”
Silagadze said, “ether.fan NFTs are just wrapped ETHs with a PFP.”
OpenSea an ‘unlicensed casino’
Silagadze also took a decidedly controversial tone in the letter.
“OpenSea is de facto running an unlicensed casino where people engage in disastrous gambling and spend millions on pictures of monkeys and the like,” he said. “This is all great and ok apparently, but listing a collection that actually has a use is not allowed because it has a use.”
Ethereum stakers using Ether.Fi get NFT representations of each validator generated. The NFTs enable the storage of metadata, which the company hopes developers will use to build out further staking infrastructure. The company raised $5.3 million in February.
Silagadze appeared on CNBC last week to better explain Ether.Fi as he described what he believes sets his company apart from its competitors.
“Lido is of course the dominant player. They are by far the largest staking player in the world… there is definitely a huge first-mover advantage,” he said, reiterating that his company only launched its staking mechanism last week.
“Ether.Fi is the only staking protocol that I would describe as truly non-custodial. In other words, we are the only protocol where the strikers can manage their own keys,” he added.