Top 10 NFT Marketplaces

When it comes to buying and selling NFTs, you have a pretty extensive choice of marketplaces to do so – as befits the inherently decentralised nature of Web3. To prevent that choice from becoming overwhelming, we’ve prepared a list of the top NFT marketplaces on offer and the benefits each individual offering provides.

We’ll start by taking a look at the marketplaces with the broadest ranges of NFTs on offer, followed by more artist-focused and specialised marketplaces. And if you find you need to brush up on your Web3 jargon while reading, take a look at our Web3 glossary.

Generalist NFT Marketplaces

OpenSea

As one of the oldest NFT marketplaces (opening in 2017), OpenSea comes replete with a broad collection of NFTs, as well as the largest user base among its peers. From virtual land to music, photographs, art and trading cards, NFTs of all types are tradeable via the OpenSea marketplace.

On the creator side of the equation, OpenSea allows artists to create NFTs for free and ensure that they receive royalties after every sale. The marketplace has also introduced a gas-free NFT marketplace on the Polygon blockchain, which it says will allow creators to “earn their way” into crypto.

Rarible

Operating on the Ethereum, Flow and Tezos blockchains, Rarible allows creators to choose which blockchain to use when minting, allowing them to balance the popularity of each chain with the gas fees incurred upon it.

The community-owned platform is operated by a DAO, with a governance token known as $RARI conferring the ability to vote on changes to the platform.

Cryptopunks - NFTs — Editorial credit: mundissima / Shutterstock.com

Binance NFT

The Binance NFT exchange is part of the broader Binance cryptocurrency exchange – one of the largest of its kind. It offers all kinds of NFTs on both Ethereum and its own Binance Smart Chain (BSC).

The exchange also prominently showcases “mystery boxes” made in partnership with figures such as Toni Kroos and Mike Tyson, which entitle users to a randomised NFT.

Nifty Gateway

Owned by Cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, Nifty Gateway makes use of its parent company’s technology to store NFTs in a secure, custodial wallet, allowing collectors to move NFTs onto the platform without gas fees. The platform also supports fiat purchases and offers curated as well as verified NFTs.

The platform was founded by twin brothers Duncan and Griffin Cock Foster, and in a weird piece of cosmic synchronicity, was later acquired by the Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler, of Facebook lawsuit fame.

Artist-Focused NFT Marketplaces

Foundation

Opening in 2021, Foundation differentiates itself from the rest by virtue of being artist-run and community-led. Creators access the Ethereum NFT marketplace via an invite from an already established member of the community, while buying NFTs via auction or offers is available to anyone.

That exclusive community of creators leads to an overall higher base quality compared to other competitors. The marketplace says its creators have earned over 57,000 ETH total at the time of writing, or around $200mn.

SuperRare

SuperRare is another invite-only platform, with the marketplace saying it invites artists based on the proportion of collectors present on the website. SuperRare says it is undertaking a path of increased decentralisation which will expand access in the future, however.

SuperRare focuses exclusively on “art” NFTs and includes curated, gallery-like “spaces” for showcasing NFTs. Having been around since 2018, the platform debuted a curation token in 2021 that confers access to the SuperRare DAO which decides the platform’s future.

MakersPlace

Invite-only MakersPlace has a reputation for partnering with the mainstream art world, including auction house Christie’s. NFTs are digitally signed by artists in categories such as photography, 3D art and animation, which are then released in limited numbers.

The partnership with Christie’s led to the artist Beeple’s Everydays – The First 5,000 Days selling for over $69mn, though some queries were later raised about whether it actually qualified as an NFT.

EVERYDAYS - THE FIRST 5000 DAYS, 2021 by Beeple — Image Credit: EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS, 2021 by Beeple

KnownOrigin

KnownOrigin describes itself as artist-driven, and duly features NFTs in a range of formats, from animated 3D pieces to paintings. Artists must be vetted before joining the platform, with art files themselves hosted on distributed storage solution IPFS and given unique provenance identifiers.

It specialises in limited runs of artworks released in periodic timed drops, with the most expensive NFT artworks sold on the platform being The Bull and The Bear by Trevor Jones, sold for 55.55 and 35 eth respectively.

Specialist NFT Marketplaces

Async Art

Async Art is certainly the most differentiated of all the marketplaces on this list, specialising in so-called “programmable” art. The generative artworks offered on the marketplace are able to evolve over time thanks to being split into layers, which can be owned and altered by different people within the parameters set by the original artist.

These can include swappable elements known as “states”, as well as factors such as colour, scale, rotation and transparency.

Solanart

Unlike the other options we’ve highlighted, Solanart hosts NFTs on the Solana blockchain rather than Ethereum. While Solana supports cryptocurrencies, decentralized applications, smart contacts and NFTs like Ethereum, it supports a higher throughput with improved transactions-per-second thanks to its proof-of-history feature and proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.

The marketplace hosts a curated set of collections, with some of the biggest examples being Degenerate Ape Academy, Aurory and SolPunks.

February 21, 2022

Overcoming the Ethereum Blockchain Trilemma

As the use cases of blockchain technology have ballooned in recent times (with everything from NFTs to oracles), a significant problem has emerged with protocols such as Ethereum. The high demand for making transactions on the blockchain has led to the gas fees which are necessary to power them becoming increasingly expensive. At the same time, the algorithms that must be performed to add to the blockchain are proving wasteful and slow. In short, blockchains have a major throughput problem – one that could even scupper the arrival of Web3. So just what is being done about it?

The Blockchain Trilemma

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain, has postulated a so-called “blockchain trilemma” that means developers have to make trade-offs between decentralization, scalability and security – without being able to deliver all three at the same time. In its current incarnation, Ethereum is arguably prioritizing the latter two.

The long-awaited Ethereum 2.0 is a response to these concerns but has been in gestation for so long (since 2014!) that even its name has been deprecated. The ideas behind the upgrade are to make Ethereum simultaneously more scalable (with an ambition of supporting thousands of transactions per second), secure, and sustainable – all while still remaining decentralized.

As it currently stands, Ethereum nodes (the computers powering the blockchain) struggle to handle the transactions per second required. It may surprise you to learn that Ethereum can only handle somewhere between 15-45 transactions per second – severely limiting what decentralized applications are capable of. To remedy that, Ethereum wants to increase the number of nodes rather than increasing the size of nodes (which would restrict access to only those with the most powerful and expensive computers).

Vitalik Buterin - Ethereum — Vitalik Buterin – Ethereum

Proof-of-Stake

Let’s take a closer look at the technology behind the Ethereum upgrades. One of its major innovations is moving the way it validates transactions from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. The former involves miners solving complex mathematical problems in order to add new blocks onto the chain – which as we mentioned before is slow and expensive. Proof-of-stake instead sees users staking cryptocurrency to become validators. They are then randomly chosen to create new blocks as well as check and confirm blocks created by others.

You’ll remember that Buterin’s trilemma means that decentralization should suffer at the expense of security and scalability. But Ethereum is betting on the power of proof-of-stake to allow it to overcome that problem. That’s because proof-of-stake ensures that the barriers to entry are low. Users are able to stake the ETH token to become validators who process transactions and create new blocks on the chain – something far easier to get into versus the mining that currently secures the network.

Shard Chains and Rollups

Along with the proof-of-stake upgrades is another crucial feature for scalability: shard chains. The idea is to help Ethereum process more transactions and store data more efficiently by creating new chains known as shards.

Those shards are part of efforts to simultaneously preserve the golden goose of Web3 – decentralization. Stakers will be randomly assigned to validate the shard chains, which are planned to number 64 in total. The shard chains will only require validators to store and run data for the shard they are validating, rather than the whole network – making becoming a validator more accessible and less hardware-intensive.

The initial plan is to have the shard chains only provide data to the network, being incapable of handling transactions. The key to using them to boost throughput is via technology known as rollups. These allow transactions to be executed outside the main Ethereum chain, before being resubmitted alongside cryptographic proof – essentially taking computation off-chain while the data stays on.

All upgrades combined, Ethereum is targeting 100,000 transactions per second – an exponential increase on what it currently achieves. In terms of delivering these upgrades, however, Ethereum is taking a slow approach – opting to roll out improvements over time. The proof-of-stake element, in the form of the Beacon Chain, shipped in December 2020. Actually merging it with the main Ethereum Network is scheduled for 2022, while shard chains are targeted for release in 2023.

Outside of Ethereum

Despite its popularity, Ethereum is of course far from the only blockchain, and others are attempting to solve the problem of throughput and scalability in different ways. Sidechains are one prominent example, a practice whereby a blockchain is linked to another, allowing tokens to move between the two. Liquid Network, for instance, pairs with Bitcoin as the main chain. It works by enabling users to send coins to an output address on the main chain, at which point coins will show up in Liquid Network instead. After their business is done, assets can be moved back onto the main chain.

Solving the blockchain trilemma is continuing to prove a very difficult task – but only once it is achieved does the full potential of Web3 have any chance of being unlocked. What is clear is that no one approach will suffice – and even in combination, estimated speeds remain a tiny fraction of what we are used to in traditional computing.

February 1, 2022

Web3 Glossary

From airdrops to NFTs to smart contracts, the jargon that is part and parcel of Web3 can be hard to comprehend – even for seasoned veterans of the space. If you’re interested in Web3 and its many facets, read on to get a better understanding of some of the more unusual terms floating about the metaverse.

Metaverse — Image credit: Chaosamran Studio, Shutterstock

Airdrop: The practice of distributing free cryptocurrency tokens in order to kickstart the launch of a new currency.

Augmented reality: Any technology that enhances a real-world environment with additional digital information such as 3D graphics.

Avatar: A digital representation of a user’s character within a virtual world, typically highly customizable in terms of appearance.

Blockchain: A digital ledger recording information and storing it securely while verifying its authenticity with cryptography. It grows via a process known as mining, whereby computers on the network solve increasingly complex mathematical problems in order to securely add new records – meaning that new transactions are verified and recorded without the interference of one central authority.

Cryptocurrency: Frequently abbreviated to “crypto”, cryptocurrency is a digital form of currency secured by blockchain technology.

Cryptography: The practice of securing information during transmission. The communication is first encrypted to prevent third party interference, before being decrypted on the other end with the help of a key – ensuring only the sender and receiver can access the information within.

Decentralization: A method of organization that doesn’t rely on the control of a central authority, instead distributing decision making among participants.

Decentralized applications (Dapps): Decentralized apps are pieces of software built and hosted on blockchain technology. Examples include cryptocurrency wallets, games and financial services applications.

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs): A DAO is a new form of distributed organization controlled by its members, with its rules and activity recorded on blockchain technology.

Exchange: A platform enabling users to buy, sell and trade cryptocurrency – either for other forms of digital currency or traditional fiat currencies.

FOMO: An acronym for “fear of missing out”, the phrase refers to buying into an NFT or cryptocurrency to avoid the regret that would occur if it ballooned in value.

Gas: A fee that must be paid to validate and confirm transactions on the Ethereum blockchain and similar platforms. The price is related to the amount of work required to include transactions in a new block.

GM/GN: An abbreviation of “good morning” and “good night” respectively, the greeting is a common feature of crypto communities.

Governance: In a Web 3.0 sense, governance refers to the the structuring of a blockchain and how it is led, with popular approaches including on-chain governance, where rules are encoded into the blockchain protocol, and off-chain governance, where decisions are made away from the blockchain itself.

IRL: an abbreviation of “in real life”, referring to the real world as opposed to the metaverse or cryptocurrency community.

LAND: A non-fungible token that represents ownership of virtual land in the Decentraland platform.

Layer 1: A term used to describe the base blockchain architecture, with a layer 1 network serving as a source of truth and the authority for transactions via consensus mechanisms.

Layer 2: A term describing a network building on top of an underlying blockchain, intended to extend its functionality and reduce gas fees and transaction times.

Metaverse: A term referring to a virtual 3D world in which users can interact, socialise and play, as well as an imagined future wherein the internet can be accessed as a virtual world.

Mining: The process by which new cryptocurrency units are created and transactions confirmed. Computers solve complex mathematical problems to verify transactions and add them to the blockchain network as a new block, with the first miner to solve the problem rewarded with new items of cryptocurrency.

Minting: The practice of issuing a new piece of art as an NFT, by turning it into a digital token that’s recorded on the blockchain. The process is typically handled by a marketplace.

NFTs (non-fungible tokens): An NFT is an entry on a blockchain establishing who has ownership of a digital item such as a piece of art or a trading card.
Peer-to-peer networking: A peer-to-peer network allows users to communicate with each other without resorting to a central server, as with blockchain.

PFP: An abbreviation of profile picture, the term typically is used in relation to images that can be bought as part of an NFT series and used on social media profiles.

“Probably nothing”: A phrase typically used ironically to infer that an opportunity is in fact “probably something”.

Proof-of-stake: One of two popular approaches to validating transactions on the blockchain, proof-of-stake sees users staking cryptocurrency to become validators. They are then randomly chosen to create new blocks as well as check and confirm blocks created by others.

Proof-of-work: One of two popular approaches to validating transactions on the blockchain, proof-of-work relies on the efforts of miners solving complex mathematical problems in order to add new blocks onto the chain.

Public key: One of two pairs of keys within a cryptographic system. The public key can be known to others and allows the owner to receive cryptocurrency from another user.

Private key: One of two pairs of keys within a cryptographic system. The private key must be kept a secret to everyone except the owner and allows them to send cryptocurrency from a wallet.

Smart contract: A smart contract is a program stored on a blockchain that executes when certain conditions are met, allowing transactions and other operations to happen without the involvement of an intermediary.

Token: A slightly nebulous term for cryptocurrencies in general, token is also frequently used to describe crypto assets that piggyback on another, more popular cryptocurrency’s blockchain.

Virtual land: Created by the developers of a given metaverse platform, land is parcelled off to users who are free to utilise it within the limits of that platform’s features. Owning virtual land involves buying an NFT that confers ownership of a digital space.

Virtual reality: A simulation typically accessed through a virtual reality headset, allowing the user to interact with a digital world.

WAGMI: An acronym for “we are gonna make it”, the term is used to show fellowship with holders of a given cryptocurrency by asserting that their investment will be successful
Wallet: Unlike a physical wallet that stores currency itself, a cryptocurrency wallet stores the keys to access your cryptocurrency on the blockchain.

Web3: A successor to the current model of web 2.0, Web3 represents a new era for the internet emphasizing decentralization and user ownership – alongside new methods of interaction in virtual worlds.

“Wen moon”: Also found in other forms such as “wen lambo”, the intentionally misspelt phrase asks how long it will take for the price of a given digital asset to rise as high as the moon.