OpenSea Reverses Decision to Limit NFTs Created via Its Free Mining Tool After Community Backlash

The free minting tool offered by OpenSea allowed creators to make NFTs without worrying about the costs of the minting process.

By Shomik Sen Bhattacharjee | Updated: 28 January 2022 16:37 IST

OpenSea Reverses Decision to Limit NFTs Created via Its Free Mining Tool After Community Backlash

Photo Credit: OpenSea

NFT creators were livid with OpenSea's decision to limit use to its free NFT minting tool

Highlights

OpenSea has announced that it will reverse its minting limit
OpenSea noted that its free minting feature was being abused
The NFT platform also apologised to creators after reversing the limit

The world's largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, recently decided to impose a limit to its free minting tool, only to roll back on the call which posed a 50-item limit on minting NFTs on the platform using its smart contracts. Before now, OpenSea users were free to mint as many NFTs as they liked on the platform using its own internal collection storefront contract. However, the recent announcement of a cap on minting and collecting NFTs came as a shock to the entire community.

OpenSea's new Twitter support account tweeted on January 27 that it had “updated our [OpenSea] collection storefront contract limits” to only allow five collections per NFT wallet or user, and a maximum of 50 items or NFT collectibles in each collection. OpenSea's primary Twitter account retweeted the original tweet shortly after with a subsequent tweet in the thread stating, “We know this change may impact our community so please don't hesitate to share how this affects your creative flow.”

We know this change may impact our community so please don't hesitate to share how this affects your creative flow.
— OpenSea Support (@opensea_support) January 27, 2022

According to OpenSea's Twitter team, the decision to put a cap on these items was taken after it resolved issues relating to its creator tools. However, the sheer number of disgruntled users who responded to the NFT platform's second tweet took the company by surprise.

Some users lamented about their incomplete NFTs and how it would be a challenge to see it to the end. One user took to Twitter to tell the support team that his NFT upload had been stuck at 96 while he was looking to upload a total of hundred images. While creators could create a smart contract to help them navigate that aspect, it's a challenge.

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To all the creators in our community impacted by the 50 item limit we added to our free minting tool, we hear you and we're sorry.

We have reversed the decision.
But we also want to offer an explanation ↯ pic.twitter.com/Y3igaE1RM2
— OpenSea (@opensea) January 27, 2022

According to some users, the platform charges about $2,000 (roughly Rs. 1.5 lakh) in gas fees during a smart contract deployment. Some angry users have threatened to take their arts away from the platform to other places. However, the decision has been reversed, and OpenSea's Twitter team has apologised to its users and community. Another issue that got users riled up was a message sent from OpenSea asking users to take down their old listings. This was because it suspected that a bug allowed some malicious actors to purchase NFTs for old prices instead of the current ones.

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While the free limit reverse has taken place, the platform is still reviewing measures it can use to prevent bad actors from exploiting the system. This is one of the biggest issues that the NFT market is currently faced with, although it's far from the most serious one.

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