An NFT (Non-Fungible Token) marketplace is an online platform that facilitates the buying, selling, and trading of NFTs. NFTs are unique digital tokens that represent ownership or proof of authenticity of a specific digital or physical asset, often using blockchain technology, most commonly on platforms like Ethereum.
Blockchain Technology: NFTs are typically built on blockchain platforms that support smart contracts, with Ethereum being the most common. Smart contracts enable the automatic execution of specific terms and conditions, such as royalty payments to creators for each resale.
Discoverability: NFT marketplaces provide users with the ability to discover and explore a wide range of digital assets. Users can browse different categories, artists, and collections to find NFTs that match their interests.
Buying and Selling: Users can buy NFTs listed on the marketplace using cryptocurrency. Sellers can list their digital assets, set prices, and potentially receive royalties for subsequent resales.
Wallet Integration: Users need a cryptocurrency wallet to interact with NFT marketplaces. These wallets store NFTs and enable transactions on the blockchain.
Royalties and Smart Contracts: Many NFT marketplaces support smart contracts that automatically distribute royalties to creators when an NFT is resold. This feature ensures that artists and creators continue to benefit from the resale of their work.
Blur previously conducted a large airdrop to its users in efforts to become the number 1 NFT marketplace, taking the top spot from Opensea. Blur’s efforts were fruitful, and thanks to this bootstrapping of liquidity and rewards for users, it did become the top NFT marketplace for a time in terms of both market share and trading volumes.
Thanks to Blur, other NFT marketplaces are now more likely to offer airdrops.
One such NFT marketplace with an upcoming airdrop is Talis, the NFT marketplace for the Injective Blockchain.
Talis has recently launched the $TALIS token for governance and rewards, and will conduct an airdrop for users that own certain NFTs, stake INJ with their validator, and transaction volume. Furthermore, they promise these airdrops will be quarterly.
It is speculated that one of the top NFT marketplaces, Magic Eden, may perform an airdrop.
The criteria for top NFT marketplaces relate to both popularity in terms of marketshare, and the trading volume that they drive on their respective blockchains. As ever, we’ll try to share on-chain data to back up the status of each marketplace. Dappradar.com has a helpful collection of data around top NFT marketplaces, which we recommend checking out.
A name synonymous with NFT trading, Opensea is one of the earlier marketplaces, having launched in 2017 on the Ethereum blockchain and going from strength to strength ever since. Opensea now supports several other blockchains and Layer-2s. It has been noted for high-fees but also features popular and exclusive NFTs through a user-friendly interface that is great for beginners.
Another NFT marketplace with its own token, LooksRare has paid out over $1.3bn in rewards to its users through trading discounts, collectibles called Gems and staking rewards. LooksRare has now started offering games on the platform including Poke The Bear on the Arbtrium Layer-2 for Ethereum. Unlike other NFT marketplaces, LooksRare is available on both the Apple and Google app stores. It offers multiple blue-chip NFT projects such as Azuki, Bored Ape Yacht Club and Pudgy Penguins.
Rarible is a community-governed NFT marketplace that uses the RARI token for governance and rewards. It focuses on high-quality digital art, but also offers items such as NFTs from web3 video games and more. Unusually for an NFT marketplace, it has partnerships with traditional firms like Adobe, and offers NFTs on the Tezos blockchain.
Originally the go-to Solana NFT marketplace, Magic Eden is expanding to other chains including Polygon and Bitcoin. Seeking to offer NFT traders low fees and quick transactions, Magic Eden enjoys a strong following of traders who look forward to its growing loyalty and rewards programs.
Though OpenSea has reclaimed the top spot for sales and trading volumes by a wide margin, Blur remains a hugely successful NFT marketplace and has a noticeably higher average price for its NFTs than OpenSea.
Blur continues to offer airdrop programs, with its current season 3 working in conjunction with the upcoming Ethereum L2 Blast.
NBA Top Shot - notable for accepting fiat for payments and selling NFTs related to historic basketball moments, NBA Top Shot made headlines when it sold an NFT for over $200,000.
SuperRare - focussed on extremely high-quality works, SuperRare is a premium marketplace with high fees and zero tolerance for memes.
Exchange-run NFT Marketplaces - Nifty Gateway was acquired and is now operated by the centralised exchange Gemini, whilst Binance and OKX also have their own NFT marketplaces.
Project-Specific NFT Marketplaces - the Axie Infinity marketplace has been popular throughout its history, and the growing ImmutableX marketplace is likely to become a top NFT marketplace one day,
