Inspiration

The inspiration for this project came from a viral Twitter post I saw from @CryptoXpresso . I had never heard of Opensea offering refunds before so I was quite intrigued with the process. One thing I instantly noticed, however, was how many steps it took to accurately get the amount that Opensea owes you. It isn't easy for the average individual to read etherscan and export all of their failed Opensea transactions.

That weekend I started thinking: How can I make this process easier for the average individual? Speed was of the essence here as I wanted to capture as many users as I could while this post was viral. I had never worked with blockchain data before, but I figured this was a simple enough problem that it was the perfect time to start. So I got to work!

Styling

Initially, I kept the styling extremely simple due to time constraint and the practicality I wanted for the app. There would be an input for the Ethereum address to check, a balance checker, and a table to showcase all of your transactions. Also, I added a dark mode option.

Vision

My vision for this project was to showcase all of the Ethereum transactions that failed an interaction with the Opensea contracts by simply inputting your Ethereum address. I wanted to display it in a simple table with the date, transaction hash, gas fee, and etherscan link. I also wanted to clearly display the total Opensea refund amount as well as an option to export the table to an Excel sheet.

I had never worked with blockchain data before so my first step was to find an API that could filter the entire history of someones Ethereum address. This proved rather easy though since etherscan has a free API that you can use for personal projects. This would work perfectly!

Setting up the Ethereum address input was easy enough. I created a state that would store the address that a user inputs. I wanted to test the etherscan API so I decided to have it display the addresses Ether balance to the right. This way, the user could confirm that they inputted their address in correctly.

Then came the more technical part of the app: filtering the ethereum transactions. There were two basic criteria I needed to filter out the transactions by: failed transactions, and interactions with the Opensea contract. Filtering the JSON data by failed transactions was easy enough, but I remembered Opensea has gone through multiple contract upgrades in the past.

I was able to find 4 contracts that were deployed by Opensea by looking at my personal past Opensea transactions, searching for Opensea contracts on etherscan, and using Twitter advanced search to find Tweets related to contract upgrades.

Once I was able to filter all of the necessary failed Opensea transaction, I simply needed to extract the gas amount and convert it to Ether. I could then find the total amount of gas, which is the amount that Opensea owes you back in reimbursement.

Lastly, I wanted to add a simple Export to Excel button. I found a package that would make this a simple button click and I was done!

Testimonials

The only thing left to do was to release it to world. I hoped it would help a few people who had not received their reimbursement yet or were unable to find their reimbursement amount. The response I got was extraordinary!

Over 800 likes, 200 retweets, and nearly 100 comments. I was genuinely surprised at the amount of positive responses I was receiving. Let me tell you, it is a great feeling creating something so useful. It reaffirmed my belief that users want something fast and simple, which was exactly what this app was. Here are some of my favorite responses and feedback:

The feedback I received was nothing short of incredible. It felt amazing to help so many people and have them offer me encouraging words on my web development process. Who knew I could help so many people by building a simple tool over the weekend?

In fact, my app was so popular it may have actually backfired. Shortly after launching the app, many users started reporting Opensea changing their policy to only allow reimbursement for transactions occuring in the last 30 days.

Despite the new policy, this app is still useful for active NFT traders as they can receive their monthly reimbursement from Opensea. So I decided to leave the site up and to this day I still receive messages from grateful users using my app.

Sometimes, you don't need to be an incredible coder to create a popular app. You just need to seize the moment 🙂

Update (1/15/2023)

Over the weekend, I decided to revisit this project and add more functionality to it that I wasn't able to before due to both a time constraint and inability. I also wanted to completely revamp the styling and create a more aesthetically pleasing website and a better UI / UX for the user.

Here is what I came up with:

I decided to scrap the light and dark theme and instead create a wavy background using the Haikei app. I thought this was appropriate as a nod to 'Opensea'. I revamped to an aqua and pink color theme and also reduced the font weights to create a more minimalistic look. Instructions were added to the top as well as direct links to the Opensea Help Center. For the transaction table, I removed the 'Link' column and instead added the etherscan links to the 'Tx Hash' data. I also made the table transparent and added a box shadow to make it pop out more.

In terms of functionality, I added ENS support through web3.js to make it easier to get your refund amount instead of using your Ethereum address. I also added a 'Sort 30 Days' button to adhere to the new Opensea policy of only allowing refunds within 30 days. This would make it easier for frequent users to quickly check if they are eligible for any more refunds. I added a simple Loader that shows up when you input an Ethereum Address or a .eth ENS so you know that the table is generating. Lastly, I decided to remove the export to XLS button due to the fear of malware and increasing download scams. Instead, I replaced it with a 'Copy Table' button which will neatly copy your Table to the clipboard. From here, you can paste it in Excel or forward it to the Opensea Help Center. I figured this would be safer than downloading an actual file.

Overall, I'm extremely pleased with the updates. The site looks a lot cleaner and simpler to use. Key functionality was added to improve the user experience. This is definitely an site that I am extremely proud of.

An important takeaway from this update is that no project is truly complete. As you learn more and more, you should revisit your old projects and update them up to your new skill level. This was a fun weekend activity and I look forward to revisiting this project again to see what else I can add!

Update (1/31/2023)

Unfortunately, Opensea has decided to shutdown the refund policy. I suspect it may be due to my application going viral, and Opensea struggling as a company. Although it pains me to see my time, effort, and innovation eventually becoming fruitless, I learned a lot about developing and marketing a useful application like Opensea Refund. Feel free to read the full synopsis below: