NFTs have become one of the hottest crypto trends of 2021, with large companies like Facebook, Visa and Alibaba jumping in on the NFT bandwagon.
In the second quarter of 2021, the sales volume of NFTs surged to new heights, hitting $2.5 billion in sales so far this year. This makes it clear that NFTs are here to stay.
Here are a list of marketplaces where you can buy, sell and trade NFTs:
1. OpenSea
OpenSea dubs themselves as “the world’s first & largest NFT marketplace”. They are regarded as behemoths in the NFT marketplace space, with overall transaction volume surpassing over $3.4 billion in August, 10 times of that the month before.
OpenSea houses anything from music and art to virtual reality, trading cards and sports NFTs. Even items from popular NFT games like Axie Infinity, CryptoKitties and Decentraland can all be found here.
The platform recently raised $100 million with a $1.5 billion valuation in July, which is one of the highest valuation figures for a NFT marketplace. This further establishes them as the leader in enabling access of NFTs to the general public.
OpenSea is one most popular NFT marketplaces right now, with over 34 million listings on the marketplace and a recent funding round raising up to $100M. Users can create (or mint) their own NFTs on the blockchain for free using OpenSea’s item minting tool, without the need for a single line of code.
2. Rarible
Rarible is a community-owned marketplace, with its owners holding the Ethereum-based RARI token. The platform focuses mainly on digital art,
As an incentive to build an active community, users on the platform who buy or sell NFTs on the Rarible marketplace are rewarded with 75,000 worth of RARI every week. Rarible is the best-in-class platform to earn royalties on selling NFTs, with rates reaching up to even 30% as compared to OpenSea’s 10%.
Mark Cuban, who is a big proponent of DeFi and NFTs, was also found to have $62,000 worth of RARI tokens in his wallet back in July.
3. SuperRare
SuperRare is a marketplace to trade and collect one-of-a-kind, single-edition digital artwork. Each artwork is created authentically by an artist on the network, and tokenized as an NFT that you can own and trade.
SuperRare claims themselves to be a mix of Instagram and a stock exchange/auction house, and instead of community votes to verify each artwork’s listing, the SuperRare team verifies artwork themselves to ensure the platform is equipped with only quality NFTs.
As they’re in early access mode, SuperRare only works with a handful of leading concepts artists to create digital art, and artists have to submit their profiles through an online form to list their NFTs.
4. Mintable
Mintable is a Singapore-based NFT minting platform and marketplace launched in 2018 to allow creators and artists a marketplace to monetise their work.
Mintable is backed by Mark Cuban and they raised $13 million in a Series A funding round back in July from investors which include Ripple Labs, Metapurse and John Kim, president of platform and marketplaces at Expedia Group
The Mintable marketplace supports three different types of auctions for user convenience — Timed Auctions, Buy it Now Auctions, and Traditional Auctions.
5. Nifty Gateway
Nifty Gateway is an online NFT auction house owned by cryptocurrency exchange Gemini. Nifty Gateway differs from other NFT marketplaces in that users are able to pay with their credit cards, and they don’t require a Metamask or any digital wallet.
Nifty Gateway combines centralised processes with a decentralised system for a more user-friendly experience. However, this might be a deterrence to die-hard decentralised users.
Digital artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, made record news in March when his NFT titled “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” sold for over $69 million on the marketplace.
6. Foundation
Foundation is a P2P online marketplace where artists sell their digital art, and are also able to invite other artists to join the platform through their own single-use invite code.
Before an artist can build a profile, they have to either mint their own NFTs or purchase artwork from the site. Profiles are then verified through community upvotes. This ensures the hands behind the artwork are invested in their thriving community.
7. NBA Top Shot
NBA Top Shot is a sports NFT marketplace owned by the NBA. Highlights and clips from NBA matches are sold as individual NFTs called Moments.
Aside from this, trading cards and accessories from famous basketball players are also converted into NFTs and sold on the marketplace. The marketplace gives users authenticity and ownership rights for these products, whose demand is fueled by passionate fans wanting to own a piece of basketball history.
Dapper Labs, the company behind NBA Top Shot crossed the million-user mark back in May, and raised funds at a reported $2.6 billion valuation a month before that.
The Future of NFTs
NFTs saw a boom in popularity this year, and the community is likely to encounter even more unique and innovative projects in the next coming months.
One interesting example is the story of Loot, an NFT game which started of with a list of items, with users populating the world until it was a fully-fledged game with artwork, a passionate community and a functional economy.
With even large corporations like Rakuten, Japan’s largest e-commerce platform going into the NFT space, the future holds bright for NFTs.
Also Read: NFTs Are Booming In Popularity: 6 Key Metrics Investors Can Use To Evaluate NFT Projects
