OpenSea and the Seaport Working Group have rolled out Seaport 1.6, the latest iteration of the NFT marketplace protocol tailored for the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) ecosystem.
A notable addition in this upgrade is the introduction of ‘Seaport hooks,’ which draws inspiration from Uniswap v4 hooks. These hooks are designed to facilitate the development of applications aimed at enhancing the utility and liquidity of NFTs. Acting as order fulfillment plugins, developers can seamlessly integrate custom contracts into the Seaport protocol using these hooks.
Compared to its predecessor, Seaport 1.5, version 1.6 harnesses the most recent Ethereum Dencun update. Consequently, users can expect a 5% reduction in gas fees for certain transactions, with major EVM chains already implementing this deployment.
The Seaport hooks feature allows contracts to be deployed and invoked by Seaport, ensuring a streamlined and efficient order execution process. This enables NFTs to adapt their properties based on purchase conditions, such as price and volume, and facilitates acquisition using specific currencies or other NFTs. Moreover, it opens avenues for the development of bonding curves and price oracles for NFTs.
OpenSea plans to transition user orders to Seaport 1.6 on Monday, March 25, with no user interaction required. Additionally, starting Monday, April 1, only Seaport 1.6 orders will be accepted by the OpenSea Developer API, gradually phasing out Seaport 1.5 over time.
Furthermore, OpenSea highlighted that the integration of Seaport hooks will enable NFT sales to tap into liquidity from various on-chain sources, expanding possibilities for DeFi and NFT interoperability. This integration is anticipated to introduce features like time-weighted average price (TWAP) oracles for the NFT sector.
According to OpenSea, “Hooks and the broader Seaport ecosystem are an invitation to the developer and creator community to push the envelope for what’s possible for NFTs, and, ideally, to enable those experiences to be natively surfaced.”
This update coincides with a downturn in the NFTmarket. On March 6, data from Cryptoslam revealed that OpenSea, once the leading NFT marketplace, now ranks fourth. Additionally, the average price of digital collectibles on OpenSea dropped by as much as 22.22% at the time of the report’s publication. While activity on the Bitcoin network has surged, Ethereum NFTs have witnessed a notable decline in their price floor in recent months.