NFT Not Showing in OpenSea? How to Refresh Metadata

You just minted a hot new NFT. You checked your wallet. The transaction cleared. You go to OpenSea to flex your new digital art, and… nothing. Or worse, you see a generic “placeholder” image instead of the rare 1-of-1 you paid for. It feels like you got scammed.

I’ve been there. I’ve spent hours staring at a spinning loading icon. Most of the time, your money isn’t gone. The blockchain has your NFT, but OpenSea is just having a bad day. OpenSea is a window, not the house itself. If the window is dirty, you can’t see what’s inside. Here is how to fix it.

Why Your NFT is Playing Hide and Seek

OpenSea doesn’t store your NFT. Let’s get that straight. Your NFT lives on the blockchain (Ethereum, Polygon, Base, or Solana). OpenSea is just a search engine that reads that data. Sometimes, the connection between the blockchain and the website breaks.

Usually, it’s one of three things. First, the metadata hasn’t been “revealed” by the creator. Second, OpenSea’s “crawler” (the bot that finds new NFTs) is stuck in traffic. Third, the NFT is sitting in your “Hidden” folder because OpenSea thinks it might be spam. I see this happen most with airdrops. If you didn’t buy it, OpenSea hides it to keep you safe.

The Hidden Tab: The Most Common Fix

Before you panic about smart contracts, check your profile. OpenSea has a “Hidden” tab. They put things there if the collection isn’t verified or if it looks suspicious.

Go to your profile. Click “More.” Click “Hidden.” If your NFT is there, hover over it, click the three dots, and select “Unhide.” It will pop back into your main gallery instantly. I’ve seen people lose their minds for three days only to find their NFT was just tucked away in this folder. Don’t be that person.

How to Manually Refresh Metadata?

If you can see the NFT but the image is wrong, or the traits are missing, you need a metadata refresh. Metadata is just a JSON file. It tells OpenSea the name, the image link, and the stats (like “Red Hat” or “Blue Eyes”).

Look at the top right of your NFT’s individual page. You’ll see a button that looks like a circular arrow. That is the “Refresh Metadata” button. Click it. You’ll see a small pop-up saying, “We’ve queued this item for an update.”

Here’s the catch: it isn’t instant. Sometimes it takes two minutes. Sometimes it takes two hours. If the network is congested, I’ve seen it take a full day. Click it once and walk away. Clicking it ten times won’t make the bot move faster.

Understanding the tokenURI and JSON

Let’s get technical for a second. Every NFT has a piece of code called a tokenURI. This is a web address. It points to a JSON file. That file contains the link to your actual image.

If the creator made a mistake in the smart contract, that address might be broken. If the address is broken, OpenSea can’t show you anything. You can check this yourself on Etherscan. Find your transaction, click on the “Contract” tab, and look for “Read Contract.” Find the tokenURI function, type in your Token ID, and see what it spits out. If it’s a dead link, no amount of refreshing on OpenSea will fix it. The developer has to fix the contract.

IPFS vs. Centralised Servers: Where is Your Image?

Where does that tokenURI point? If it points to a website like my-nft-project.com/1.json, that’s a centralised server. If the developer stops paying for the website, your NFT image disappears. This is why “Not Showing” is sometimes a permanent problem.

The gold standard is IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) or Arweave. These are decentralised. The link will look like ipfs://Qm…. If your NFT uses IPFS, it’s much safer. However, IPFS can be slow. OpenSea has to “pin” these files to their own servers to make them load fast for you. If OpenSea hasn’t pinned it yet, you get the “missing image” icon.

The Reveal Process and Delayed Metadata

Many projects do a “blind mint.” You buy a mystery box, and the art is revealed 24 to 48 hours later. The developer “flips a switch” on the blockchain to update the tokenURI.

Even after the developer flips the switch, OpenSea might still show the mystery box. This is because OpenSea caches (saves) the old image to save bandwidth. This is the prime time to use that “Refresh Metadata” button. If the whole collection is still showing mystery boxes, the developer might need to use the OpenSea API to trigger a “bulk refresh.”

OpenSea API: The Pro Way to Force an Update

If the button on the website fails, you can go straight to the source. OpenSea has an API. Developers use it to tell OpenSea, “Hey, I updated 10,000 items, go look at them now.”

You can actually trigger this yourself if you know a little bit of URL hacking. There is a specific endpoint: https://api.opensea.io/api/v1/asset/[contract_address]/[token_id]/?force_update=true. Replacing the brackets with your NFT’s info tells OpenSea’s server to stop being lazy and re-scan the blockchain. I’ve used this trick to fix “stuck” NFTs when the UI button was broken.

Network Congestion: It’s Not Just You

Sometimes the blockchain is just slammed. If gas fees are high, OpenSea’s indexers slow down. They prioritise high-volume collections. If you are minting a small indie project on a busy day, you might have to wait.

I saw this happen during the big “Base” network summer. Thousands of people were minting NFTs, and OpenSea was hours behind. Your wallet showed the NFT, but OpenSea looked like a ghost town. Don’t panic. Check a different marketplace like Blur or Magic Eden. If it shows up there, you know the NFT is fine, and OpenSea is just lagging.

Browser Cache and Local Glitches

Sometimes the problem is your computer. Your browser tries to be helpful by saving old versions of websites. This is called “caching.”

If you’ve refreshed the metadata but still see the old image, try these steps:

• Hard refresh: Press Ctrl+F5 (Windows) or Cmd+Shift+R (Mac).
• Clear your browser cache in settings.
• Try a different browser (if you use Chrome, try Brave or Firefox).
• Check on your mobile phone using the OpenSea app.

If it looks right on your phone but wrong on your desktop, the problem is your computer’s memory, not the blockchain.

The “Shared Storefront” Trap

Did you create the NFT using OpenSea’s “Create” button instead of your own smart contract? This uses the “OpenSea Shared Storefront” contract. It’s a lazy minting process.

The problem with shared storefronts is that they are messy. Sometimes the metadata takes much longer to index because there are millions of NFTs on that one contract. If you are a creator and your work isn’t showing up, I highly recommend using a dedicated contract tool like Manifold or Thirdweb. It gives you more control over your metadata and makes refreshing much easier.

Contract Verification Issues

If you see a “Warning: This collection is not verified” message, OpenSea might throttle how often it updates the metadata. They do this to prevent “rug pulls, where a scammer changes the images of a collection after people buy in.

If you are the owner of a new collection, make sure you have “verified” your contract on Etherscan. OpenSea’s bots trust verified contracts more. Once the green checkmark appears on Etherscan, OpenSea usually picks up the metadata changes much faster.

Polygon and Layer 2 Quirks

NFTs on Polygon or Base have an extra layer of complexity. These networks use “bridges” to talk to Ethereum. Sometimes the data gets stuck in the bridge.

On Polygon, I’ve seen NFTs take 30 minutes to even appear in a wallet. If you are on Polygon, the “Refresh Metadata” button is your best friend. Also, make sure your wallet is actually set to the right network. If your MetaMask is set to Ethereum but you are looking for a Polygon NFT, OpenSea might get confused when trying to link your wallet.

When to Contact Support

If it’s been 48 hours, you’ve hit the refresh button, the tokenURI is valid on Etherscan, and it’s not in your hidden folder—then you have a real problem.

OpenSea support is slow. Don’t expect a reply in ten minutes. When you message them, give them the contract address and the Token ID. Don’t just say “My NFT is gone.” Give them the proof from the blockchain. Show them the Etherscan link. It proves the error is on their end, not the blockchain’s end.

Summary Checklist

Let’s recap. If your NFT is missing or broken:

1. Check the Hidden Tab.
2. Click Refresh Metadata and wait 2 hours.
3. Check Etherscan to see if the tokenURI is a real link.
4. Clear your Browser Cache.
5. Check a Competitor Site (like Magic Eden) to see if it shows up there.

NFTs are just code. Code has bugs. Most of the time, the “Not Showing” bug is just a delay in the system. Take a breath, wait a day, and it will likely appear. The blockchain never forgets; it just takes a while to tell the rest of the world what it knows.