A Guide to The Top 5 NFT Marketplaces

Top 5 NFT Marketplaces

1. Open Sea

One of the world's first and top 5 NFT marketplaces, you can think of OpenSea as eBay for digital collectibles.

Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah established OpenSea in New York City in 2017. They soon submitted the business to the renowned Y Combinator startup incubator, where it was immediately backed with $2.7M.

It is a P2P marketplace exclusively created for NFT users. More specifically, OpenSea offers the setting necessary for producing and exchanging NFTs. The benefit of this platform is that it makes the majority of its operations, if not all of them, possible on the blockchain.

Decentralization is a vital component of the platform since users can produce, purchase, and sell NFT-based digital goods without the assistance of a middleman. The ability of OpenSea to streamline the challenging procedures involved in controlling and profiting from NFTs is another noteworthy aspect of the platform.

You don't need to know how to code to develop NFTs on OpenSea. There are also no technical requirements for using its trading interface. OpenSea is the best option for beginners because all of the essential procedures may be carried out without any issue.

2. Magic Eden

Magic Eden was launched on September 17, 2021. While many of Magic Eden's rivals operate on the Ethereum blockchain, buying and selling NFTs on the Magic Eden marketplace requires the SOL token and a Solana-compliant wallet (such as Exodus or phantom). It is the top NFT marketplace based on the Solana ecosystem.

It is not required to consider the cost of each transaction because listing, purchasing, and adjusting the price of NFTs on Solana is far cheaper than it is on Ethereum. For the novice and seasoned producers and purchasers of NFTs, Magic Eden cut the entry hurdle by placing the transaction price at 2 percent and removing the listing fee entirely.

The transaction process on Magic Eden is considerably more cost-effective than its rivals, thanks to Solana's cheaper gas expenses, which are typically just pennies. On Ethereum, for instance, gas costs can be in the range of $100, sometimes even exceeding the NFT's value.

Magic Eden has developed into a fiercely competitive cryptocurrency video game market because of its vibrant community of NFT buyers and developers. It claims to control 92 percent of the gaming market in Solana as of the debut of its new gaming platform, Eden Games.

The NFT marketplace has said that it will allocate a portion of its Series A capital to expanding its Magic Eden ecosystem-related gaming platform.

3. LooksRare

LooksRare set out to unseat OpenSea from the top rank in the NFT marketplace. It is a decentralized, community-focused NFT marketplace that actively compensates users for using the service, including traders, token holders, creators, and collectors. The platform was started by two unnamed founders using the aliases "Zodd" and "Guts" in January 2022, with a team of 11 people working on the project's development. It is the best NFT marketplace among all decentralized marketplaces.

The native token that drives the LooksRare marketplace is called LOOKS. At the time of writing this article, it has a 468 million circulating supply and is trading at $ 0.34.

Users of LooksRare can stake their LOOKS tokens to earn over 64 percent annual percentage yields in both WETH (wrapped ether) and LOOKS. With a rise in stakeholder onboarding, the APR will gradually decline.

Active and passive staking are both different. Most token investors are active investors, and their LOOKS tokens are fully unlocked. For passive stakeholders, their LOOKS tokens—such as treasury, team, and strategic sale tokens—are locked for trade but unlocked for staking. When passive stakers stake LOOKS, they do not receive additional tokens.

4. Rarible

Rarible, the first community-owned NFT marketplace, uses its RARI token, the first governance token in the NFT space, to power this style of platform managed by the community. Rarible is taking a page out of the DeFi playbook by providing users with a token that has governance abilities.

Alex Salnikov and Alexei Falin created the Moscow-based website Rarible at the beginning of 2020, which is essentially a digital NFT platform with an emphasis on art materials. Similar to OpenSea, Rarible has a marketplace where users can exchange different NFTs. Users can also produce NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, using Rarible, a process known as "minting". It's a significant deal for many content producers. An artist might, for instance, offer their works as NFTs, such as books, music CDs, or movies.

Most significantly, Rarible is putting a lot of effort into developing an independent platform that a community governance model governs. Additionally, Rarible is now making significant progress toward becoming an actual decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).

5. SuperRare

One of the top 5 NFT marketplaces, SuperRare is a niche cryptocurrency art marketplace that features a carefully curated selection of digital artwork created by established NFT artists and up-and-coming artists.

The SuperRare NFT marketplace started as a centralized platform in 2018, that used its core team to vet artists. However, in 2021, the company issued its RARE governance token, beginning the process of becoming a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) run by a group of artists and collectors.

In general, the SuperRare NFT marketplace does not list NFTs linked to digital game assets, domains, or music because it is focused on art-oriented NFTs. From psychedelic and conceptual art to photorealistic graphics, SuperRare contains works that cover a wide range of artistic genres.

SuperRare began as a high-end art gallery that only featured exclusive NFT collections from well-known artists, which its core team had approved. However, in 2021, the platform introduced its RARE token to simplify platform governance, transforming it into a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) led by its community of creators and collectors.

Conclusion

NFT marketplaces are bringing new features to their platform which is boosting the NFT ecosystem. OpenSea is outrightly a leader in the NFT space, due to its smooth UI/UX and reliable services. There is tough competition in the NFT space among the top 5 NFT marketplaces to maintain and grow their user base. It's possible in the future that a decentralized marketplace will take the first spot from OpenSea.