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Lyft's CFO Jumps Ship to OpenSea, a ride-sharing service, sparking discontent in the crypto community as they plan to lead an IPO.

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OpenSea announced the hiring of Lyft's CFO, Brian Roberts, to work on the plans for the IPO of this leading global NFT exchange. However, this move has disappointed users who were expecting the exchange to launch its own token or even waiting for airdrop rewards.

12/8 Update Brian Roberts clarifies no plans for IPO:

"The reports about OpenSea are not accurate. I want to clarify that there is a big difference between 'imagining how an IPO might happen' and 'actually planning an IPO.' We are not planning an IPO, but if we were to, we would try to involve the community."

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Chief Financial Officer Change

According to Bloomberg, Brian Roberts, who previously served as the CFO of the ride-sharing service Lyft for seven years, known for leading Lyft through rapid growth, a successful IPO, and profitability adjustments, will now take on the role of CFO at OpenSea.

Brian Roberts believes that OpenSea has already achieved profitability and its business does not require additional funding. However, future plans include acquisitions, strategic partnerships, expanding NFT applications, etc., which will still require financing for growth. He mentioned that they are already working on an IPO:

It reminds me of eBay in the 90s. Although this is still the early stage of the NFT industry and OpenSea, when your company is growing so fast, not considering an IPO would be foolish, its growth rate will make it very popular in the IPO market.

OpenSea was valued at only around $1.5 billion in the third quarter of this year, and since then has seen continuous growth. Insiders say the exchange is in the process of raising $1 billion at a valuation of over $12 billion.

Community Perspectives

The absence of a platform token at OpenSea has been a hot topic of discussion within the community, especially given examples like SushiSwap forking UniSwap and rising with the issuance of tokens.

Conspiracy theories about vampire attacks against OpenSea persist, but other platforms with tokens such as Fantom's Artion and Rarible have not been able to threaten OpenSea's dominant position.

Despite this, OpenSea's approach towards traditional finance seems to have upset the crypto community. Olaf Carlson-Wee, CEO of Polychain Capital, previously stated during the Coinbase IPO:

Exchanges should create value for institutions by launching ERC-20 tokens.

Arthur Cheong, founder of DeFiance Capital, shares a similar view:

Imagine the largest and most successful NFT trading platform choosing an IPO instead of issuing tokens, that will not be successful.

The owner of CryptoPunks #2070 expressed:

It's sickening that OpenSea is going for an IPO. It's not the venture capitalists who supported them to get here, it's us. Besides, there's another reason I can't wait to switch to "Coinbase NFT", since we're all going to use institutional platforms, might as well use one that doesn't crash three times a week.

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