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I listed an item on OpenSea for 0.01 ETH. It wasn't an auction, just a fixed price. I received an offer for 0.01 WETH. I don't understand the advantage to using WETH vs ETH. Why would somebody offer 0.01 WETH instead of simply purchasing it for 0.01 ETH as I listed it?

Are they doing this to get me to pay the gas fees instead of them? Do I pay any gas fees if I accept the offer for 0.01 WETH?

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With 1 WETH you can make an unlimited amount of bids (on different NFT's) for max 1 WETH, the moment one of the bids get traded the rest will automatically be pulled. With ETH this is not possible. So, this is to encourage bots and gives a seemingly higher liquidity on OpenSea.

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1ETH = 1WETH. Here's an explanation of why WETH even exists:

The ERC-20 standard defined certain mandatory rules for every token contract such as totalSupply, balanceOf, transfer, transferFrom, approve and allowance.

The ERC-20 standard was developed after the native token ETH was released, and ETH in its original form does not conform to its own ERC-20 standard.

In order to facilitate smart contract exchanges for other ERC-20 tokens on decentralized exchanges, ETH has to be first converted, or wrapped into an ERC-20 compliant version — WETH — which is a standardized format like other ERC-20 tokens.

source: https://medium.com/stakingbits/eth-vs-weth-what-is-wrapped-ethereum-weth-b9bb9a0856e5

Gas fees still apply and highly impact transactions of small amounts. Thus, in your case, I'd suggest sticking to one currency and avoiding extra swaps.

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mhhh, not too sure, and not really familiar with OpenSea anyways. Do you have a way to check the token contract address? because anyone can create an ERC20 token and call it WETH. Maybe the guy is just trying to scam you by sending you worthless tokens.

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  • @Foxxey, etherscan.io/token/0xc02aaa39b223fe8d0a0e5c4f27ead9083c756cc2
    – EllipticalInitial
    Commented Jul 30, 2021 at 17:09
  • Thats the right address. I dont see any difference between buying using ETH and WETH, maybe its just more convenient for him ATM, and no he'll definitely be the one paying for gas (he'll actually end up paying slightly more than by buying with normal ETH)
    – Foxxxey
    Commented Jul 30, 2021 at 17:55
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WETH or WBTC are wrapped Ethereum and wrapped Bitcoin... the idea is that ERC20 is the Gold Standard that all (fungible) tokens are judged against. Yes, there are newer standards (ERC777 looks like the main, more complete contender), but they all strive for backwards compatibility.

So once you get a wallet that understands ERC20, it'll work with WETH, WBTC, Whatever, as long you get the contract address right.

Theoretically you can unwrap it to get at the underlying currency, but since the price movements pretty match 1-to-1, you don't need to, you can just sell/swap it.

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    To my knowledge, there aren't any exchanges that support wETH. So I would have to pay gas fees to swap it, right? Given it is such a small amount, is it even worth it?
    – EllipticalInitial
    Commented Jul 30, 2021 at 20:22
  • Probably not for that amount.
    – Joel M Ward
    Commented Aug 6, 2021 at 20:23

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