Follow OpenSea on its journey to enhance its NFT metadata pipeline using Pinata’s reliable IPFS gateways and custom solutions as a roadmap. 

• Improved user satisfaction with faster metadata fetching
• Instant updates to NFT metadata during collection reveals
• 99.2% faster metadata changes and near-zero downtime
• 65% faster development cycles

About OpenSea

OpenSea is the world’s largest and most trusted decentralized marketplace for NFTs. It offers creators, collectors, and communities a platform to discover, trade, and sell digital assets across multiple blockchain ecosystems.

Challenge

Enhancing metadata reliability and speed to support rapid user growth

Imagine managing 80 million NFTs and 2 million NFT collections — all the while trying to maintain 24/7/365 uptime, fast minting and data retrieval, and living up to the expectations of 3 million active users.

For Kartik Patel, Head of Protocol at OpenSea, this was not an imaginary scenario. OpenSea was gaining users in droves, and they needed the reliability, scalability, and fluid user experience expected of the world’s leading NFT marketplace. However, the team faced a hurdle: their IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) gateways simply couldn’t keep up with the company’s growing user demand. This led to inconsistencies when fetching metadata and frustrating delays when minting NFTs and unveiling new collections.

In his quest to find the perfect new technology to address these challenges, Kartik searched for three main benefits: 

• ‍Scalability – Handling large amounts of stored metadata without having to worry about the complexities of managing it.
• Efficiency – Being able to retrieve data at the speed (less than two seconds) at which people are used to from web 2.0 tools and applications, even when experiencing higher-than-usual traffic and load.
• Uptime – Allowing users to access collections and make transactions anywhere at any time, regardless of device.‍

When Kartik found Pinata, he knew he had followed the right path. With Pinata’s APIs and Gateways, OpenSea got a faster, more reliable way to handle metadata updates — right when their users needed it most.

Solution

Reliable metadata hosting with Pinata’s IPFS gateways

Pinata’s flexible infrastructure helps OpenSea stay nimble. Fast, reliable support means new features go live quickly. Plus, traffic spikes are no longer a concern — Pinata’s infrastructure kept everything running smoothly even when hundreds of thousands of users are minting NFTs and accessing their favorite collections. 

Through Pinata, OpenSea now has:  

• Flexibility – Pinata offers a global CDN (Content Delivery Network) and dedicated IPFS gateways, enabling it to handle traffic spikes without compromising performance. As a result, users can store large amounts of data and access it across distributed nodes quickly. Meanwhile, OpenSea remains agile while scaling its operations to meet increasing user demand. 
• Performance – With Pinata, OpenSea’s metadata pipelines remain responsive even during high-traffic periods. Pinata's infrastructure scales automatically to meet demand and their IPFS gateways provide faster, more reliable access to data. The marketplace can now handle large traffic spikes during major NFT drops without compromising metadata fetching times or risking downtime.
• Fast Builds – OpenSea works closely with Pinata’s customer support team to prioritize and launch new features quickly, which accelerates the time to market for their new offerings. Just in 2024 alone, OpenSea has rolled out multi-chain support, Seaport protocol updates, and new API tools to make trading NFTs faster and easier for both developers and users.  

Results

Improving reliability, scalability, and user experience with 65% faster development cycles

Thanks to Pinata, OpenSea users now get instant NFT updates, even during high-traffic drops. Their developers are launching features faster and handling less downtime, and their users are minting new NFTs and accessing collections quickly. It’s a win-win for everyone. OpenSea has now achieved:

• 65% faster development cycles
• 99.2% faster metadata changes and near-zero downtime
• Instant updates to NFT metadata during collection reveals
• Improved user satisfaction with faster metadata fetching

And with near-zero downtime, they’re able to handle even more data as they scale and provide a high-quality user experience with the help of Pinata.