OpenSea Acquires Dharma Labs, Welcomes New CTO

This post was originally published on Opensea

There’s no question that OpenSea is in build mode. 2021 was a landmark year for NFTs: the world recognized their potential as building blocks for a brand new, peer-to-peer internet. As we enter 2022, NFTs are squarely in the center of the public interest – and we’re humbled by the opportunity to help drive the space forward.

At OpenSea, 2022 will be about building across four core priorities: 1) accelerating product development to ensure we’re meeting the needs of our growing community, 2) expanding our trust, safety and reliability efforts, 3) meaningfully investing in the NFT and web3 ecosystem, and 4) significantly growing our team. And today, to help accomplish all four – we’re thrilled to announce that we’re acquiring Dharma Labs.

The team at Dharma is among the most talented and respected consumer crypto teams in the world, having built beloved experiences for seamlessly onboarding fiat currency to blockchains. Our teams share a vision that NFTs will be the cultural focal point of crypto’s adoption for years to come — and that vision can only be realized if using NFTs becomes easy & delightful for the average person. Ultimately, we believe this union will be a force multiplier for NFTs and web3 adoption, and help us dramatically improve the experience of buying, minting, and selling NFTs on OpenSea — whether you’re a beginner, or a pro.

Meet our new CTO

With the acquisition, we’ll welcome Co-Founder and CEO of Dharma Labs, Nadav Hollander, to OpenSea as our new Chief Technology Officer. Nadav is a seasoned leader from the early Ethereum community, having built, launched, and evangelized some of the most influential protocols & products in the DeFi space. He brings fresh crypto-native expertise to OpenSea’s leadership, having spent his career building systems that adeptly mask the complexities of smart contracts and blockchains for use by mainstream consumers.  Nadav’s impact will be wide-reaching, but his initial mandate will be two core priorities: improving the technical reliability and uptime of our products, and building web3-native mechanisms for engaging with and rewarding our early and loyal community.  We’re thrilled to bring his deep crypto expertise into the OpenSea leadership team.

Oceans, not aquariums

Web3 is about open, community-led, and permissionless innovation, and we’re doubling down on our contribution to that ethos. We’re excited to share that OpenSea Co-Founder and current CTO, Alex Atallah, will step into a new, externally facing role where he’ll oversee our web3 and NFT ecosystem development efforts. He’ll serve as OpenSea’s representative for the recently announced NFT Security Group, and will steer our soon-to-be-announced community investment efforts, focused on growing the entire NFT ecosystem. 

We couldn’t be more excited for the journey ahead with the Dharma team by our side. If you share our vision of building a new Internet with true ownership at its core, please join us – we’re hiring across the board! For more information about product plans for Dharma, please visit their website.

The post OpenSea Acquires Dharma Labs, Welcomes New CTO appeared first on OpenSea Blog.

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