Let’s take a closer look at the most popular platforms selling non-fungible digital assets
Top 5 NFT marketplaces. Source: pexels.com
The market for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) surged to new highs in June, reaching $2.5 billion in sales, up from just $13.7 million in the first half of 2020. Since NFTs are gaining popularity as a way of art ownership, the whole ecosystems are built around their exchange. NFT marketplaces are on the rise, to facilitate seamless NFT transactions and get high returns.
Opensea
Today, Opensea is the largest and most valuable NFT marketplace in the world. It experienced enormous growth this year, now processing more transactions daily than it did during the entire 2020. In July, it raised $100 million in funding, becoming a unicorn with a $1.5 billion value. Opensea is going to use fresh capital to expand its offerings of gaming items, digital art and collectables, event tickets, domain names, and millions of other assets backed by blockchains to new markets and audiences. In particular, the platform plans to bring support for several more blockchains including Polygon, Dapper Labs’ Flow and Tezos.
The company was founded in 2017 by Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah, experienced software engineers and cybersecurity professionals. Their P2P platform now hosts over 28 million different tokens and generates a sales volume of $518 million. In the first two days of August, the marketplace processed $95 million worth of transactions whereas the 2020 total transaction volume was estimated at $21 million.
The service has a few helpful features like NFT rankings by volume, floor price and other statistics, ‘Created’ tab showing NFTs an artist has made on tracked marketplaces, verified check marks on asset cards, and payments with debit or credit cards. There’s also a possibility for creators to decentralise their NFT metadata (media attachments and properties associated with NFTs) using the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) and Filecoin when creating on the platform.
Cryptopunks
Along with developing CryptoPunks themselves, Larva Labs has also created its own trading platform on the CryptoPunks website. Here users place bets, buy and sell CryptoPunks. The famous NFT collection presents 10,000 uniquely generated Ethereum-based characters. Every punk has their own profile page that shows their attributes as well as their ownership and for-sale status. When you read the Punk’s description, you can estimate how rare the characters and their attributes are. The ultra-rare characters are worth millions USD. You can interact with the trading platform by installing MetaMask wallet.
Recently, a few projects have copied the original CryptoPunks NFTs to sell them on other blockchains at the fraction of cost of the Larva Labs characters. For instance, collectors may come across Binance Cryptopunks, Binance Punks or Bunks that require Binance Smart Chain, SolPunks on Solana, and Polygon Punks running on the Polygon blockchain. While the Polygon version at least differs by some animation, other images are quite similar to the most wanted NFT collectibles. Their value and genuinity is still questionable. However, that doesn’t prevent active sales of those copycats.
Meanwhile, Larva Labs has recently presented its new project Meebits. This new NFT collection has 20,000 unique 3D voxel characters, created by a custom generative algorithm, then registered on the Ethereum blockchain. A custom marketplace is also included in the contract. It supports like-kind trading of up to 100 Meebits per transaction, along with all the standard buy, bid and ask transactions. Owners of a Meebit will be given access to an additional asset pack that includes the full 3D model. It can be used to render and animate a Meebit, or employ it as the avatar in the metaverse.
Bakeryswap
BakerySwap is the all-in-one DeFi platform that provides AMM DEX and NFT Marketplace solutions. Users can exchange tokens, provide liquidity, stake and farm BAKE token, play the DeFi world games and win rewards, create NFT combos, play creative games and earn NFT tokens, as well as discover new creators from weekly interviews. Another unique feature of BakerySwap is the Launchpad that allows users to get access to newly launched projects on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC). The feature called IDO or Initial DEX Offering is for Battle pets, a blockchain-based game where players can breed, exchange and battle NFT pets on BSC. Overall, the platform has a lot of gamification elements and a unique creative atmosphere that has helped this food-themed project quickly gain a prominent place in the DeFi ecosystem.
Rarible
The Rarible marketplace allows users to create, sell, and auction off digital collectibles secured by blockchain technology. The project has also launched a liquidity mining program that rewards everybody who is trading on the marketplace. Rarible offers farming and governance options too through its RARI token. Token holders can propose and vote for change, as well as moderate the platform.
This startup was founded by Russian developers Alexander Salnikov and Alexei Falin in 2020. It has already raised $16 million in funding. The startup claims it has reached $150 million in sales on the platform for 18 months of existence. It has also officially partnered with NBA Top Shot maker Dapper Labs to bring their NFT marketplace to Dapper’s Flow blockchain.
SuperRare
SuperRare’s smart contract platform allows artists to release limited-edition digital artwork tracked on the blockchain, making the pieces rare, verified, and collectible. This digital art market works on Ethereum. Each artwork is authentically created by an artist in the network, and tokenised as a collectible. SuperRare is a curated invite-only platform. That means only approved creators can mint NFTs on its site. SuperRare also integrated virtual land purchasing platform Decentraland into its marketplace.
There is a 3% transaction fee for all purchases on the platform, paid by the buyer. Creators get 85% for primary sales and a 10% royalty on secondary sales. The platform only charges a 15% artist gallery commission. The ability for artists to automatically receive a percentage of secondary-market revenue is one of the ways in which SuperRare is utilising the power of Ethereum smart contracts.
The project had a $9 million Series A round in March. The NFT marketplace needed fresh funding to support its incredible growth. Last August, it saw the trading volumes increase 365% to surpass $1.6 million. According to nonfungible.com, SuperRare is currently the fourth-highest NFT platform in terms of seven day trading volume.
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