Have you ever seen a CryptoKitty that you really wanted, but it was just a little too expensive? Or perhaps the kitty wasn’t even on sale, but you’d simply love to get a hold of it?

OpenSea has a solution to these problems: we allow users to bid on any crypto collectible they wish to purchase, even if the item isn’t up for auction! This tutorial will walk you through exactly how this works.

Let’s take the millionth CryptoKitty, Vulcat, as an example. It’s currently listed for 100 ETH, which is a pretty high price! However, there’s an OpenSea offer for 24 ETH, which means that someone is willing to buy it for 24 ETH. The seller could immediately sell it for that amount if they’d like (but perhaps they’re waiting for a higher offer)

In this tutorial we’ll show you how you can place bids too!

How to bid on items on OpenSea

First, let’s get a tiny bit technical. When bidding on items, OpenSea uses a currency called Wrapped Ethereum (WETH). The conversion rate from ETH to WETH is always 1:1, and you can downgrade any unused WETH back to ETH. WETH is essentially the same as ETH, with some special utility. To make the conversion, just to your the bids section of your OpenSea account.

Why wrap ETH?

Why go to the trouble of using a separate currency for bids? No, it’s not because we wanted do an ICO; in fact WETH is used by a number of different projects in the community. In short, wrapped ETH allows the user to bid on many different items using the same pool of Ether. So for example, as a user with 7 WETH, I could place a 7 WETH offer on Frankie, a 7 WETH offer on Perseus, a 7 WETH offer on Alien Maker…as many CryptoKitties (or other items) as I like!

The moment my first bid gets accepted, the other offers will be instantly invalidated if I no longer have enough WETH in my account.

So let’s get bidding!

Step 1: Find the object of your desire

First things first! Let’s find a CryptoKitty on OpenSea. You can browse CryptoKitties here.

This one looks good! Plus it’s owned by a user named KookyKitty (this is extra awesome: since the user has an OpenSea profile, after you make a bid, they’ll receive an email notifying them!) To make a bid, hit “Make an offer” and enter the amount that you’d be willing to pay for it.

Step 2: Wrap your ETH

After hitting “Continue”, we’ll upgrade our ETH to WETH using the WETH station. To give us a little extra WETH with which to make more bids, we’ll upgrade .05 WETH.

Note that the first time you upgrade your ETH, you’ll need to make two transactions (one to approve OpenSea’s use of WETH). You’ll only need to do that second transaction the first time you upgrade!

Step 3: Make the bid

After confirming those transactions, we’ll make an offer! Type in the offer amount (and optionally set an expiration for your offer), and hit “Confirm Offer”

Hit “Sign” and your bid is posted!

Notice that this step doesn’t require gas! How cool is that?

Step 4: Add your email to get notified when your bid is accepted

Lastly, we recommend adding a username and e-mail to your account so we can tell you if someone accepted your bid, giving you the CryptoKitty you desired. Additionally, by entering your email, you’ll get notified any time someone bids on a crypto collectible you own!

You can do this on the account settings page.

Step 5: Make tons of bids, for free!

As mentioned, once you’ve converted some WETH, you’re off to the races! You can now place as many offers (each one up to your amount of WETH) without paying a dime (gwei). In other words, go crazy!

You can see all of the offers you’ve made, as well as any offers on your items, on the “Offers” section of your account. This can be useful if you want to cancel any offers, and to check how others are valuing your items!

We hope you enjoyed this mini tutorial on one of OpenSea’s most popular features. To stay up to date on more things OpenSea, sign up for our newsletter and join us on Discord.