NFT Guide: Best NFT Market Platforms?
This article is an introduction to the most popular NFT markets and platforms used by NFT traders, investors, collectors, and artists. These platforms are the best ways to mint & find new projects.
🎨 What NFT Platforms Are Out There?
NFTs have been increasingly popular throughout the digital world every single day. Alongside its popularity, platforms are appearing to help both NFT traders, investors, collectors, and artists. There are many NFT market platforms that buyers can choose from, all of which artists can also mint their own NFT collections.
The following is a list of good places to start which are widely used by the NFT community. Before anything, there will be two main types of platforms that currently exist. Curated/invite-only that require user verification by the platform before any artist can mint their own NFTs. The other type is open-market platforms that anybody can immediately create NFTs as their own artworks. There are pros and cons for both sides, which I’ve noted below.
Invite-only Pros:
Mostly higher quality, more respected artists and collections
Less likely for rug pulls, scams making buyers feel safer
Invite-only Cons:
Higher entry to mint as an artist as you need to have an established image/invite
Commissions take by platforms are more expensive than open-market platforms
Open-market Pros:
Very low barrier of entry, anybody can mint their artwork or collection
Much cheaper platform commissions from every NFT sale
Open-market Cons:
More junk/low-quality NFTs created in large quantities, easy for yours to get lost
More likely for rug pulls, scams and buyers are much more cautious
1. SuperRare
SuperRare is still in early access and only a limited number of artists are being invited at the moment. Artists can either put their creation up for an auction-style bidding process or sell it for a set price. On the platform, users can see who the top collectors and trending artists are, how many pieces they’ve bought or created, and how much ETH they’ve spent or accumulated. Their fees are 3% for all purchases which are paid by the buyer.
For the first sale of a new art piece, the original creator receives 85% of the commission while the gallery receives 15%. For any sales after that, creators receive a 10% commission also known as royalty. To date, more than 5,000 artworks have been created with over $500,000 in fees collected by artists on SuperRare.
2. Rarible
Rarible is one of the top-rated platforms where NFTs can be bought and sold. Users can create and mint their own NFTs without any coding skills. The platform is also the first to launch a governance crypto token in the NFT space. Creators can set a percentage of future sales and a portion of consequential sales will automatically be withdrawn to the creator’s digital wallet. This feature has drawn many creators to the platform, which stands out from traditional content platforms.
Rarible charges a service fee of 2.5% per sale on both ends of the transaction, which acts as a listing fee. However, the seller can choose to take on the fee, which will cost 5% of the final sale price. You may wish to have a verified badge associated with your account. Rarible stresses that verified badges are only awarded to creators and collectors that can prove authenticity and dedication to the marketplace. Users will have to fill out a Typeform found in the website’s FAQs.
3. Known Origin
KnownOrigin is an artist-driven platform that makes it easy for digital creators to authenticate, showcase and sell NFTs. They are a commission-based platform and this is programmed into the smart contract. To become an artist or contributor on KnownOrigin you must create a profile page. They spend time reviewing the applications and verifying the artists via direct comms on Instagram, Twitter, and email. The verification team will “…ensure a very high level of due diligence” when verifying artists.
In the first sale of a KnownOrigin artwork, 85% goes to the Artist, 15% goes to the commission fee. For a secondary sale (and all sales made after the first sale) 87% goes to the Seller, 10% goes to the Artist and finally, 3% goes to the commission fee.
4. Foundation
Foundation is making NFT art auctions accessible and appealing to all. Moreover, Foundation is using NFTs for social good, to promote charitable causes and decentralization. Foundation launched in February 2021 and currently, creators can only join by being invited by members of the community.
For the first sale, creators receive 85% of the final sale price. If the piece is resold on Foundation (or OpenSea and Rarible), a 10% royalty goes back to the wallet that originally minted the NFT—in perpetuity. This is incredibly different from other platforms as royalties are paid regardless if it is on another platform (OpenSea and Rarible as of now).
5. Nifty Gateway
Nifty Gateway is owned by the parent company Gemini LLC, a cryptocurrency exchange website with twin owners and founders, the Winklevoss brothers. The main difference between Nifty Gateway and other platforms is when funding your account, there are two payment options to choose from. You can pay with a credit/debit card or with Ethereum using an ETH pre-paid balance.
Nifty Gateway takes 5% + 30 cents of every secondary sale, to cover credit card processing fees. 10% of the sale price goes to the original artist on secondary sales, so keep this in mind if you’re looking to make a profit reselling a Nifty. One downside of Nifty Gateway is that fees are not necessarily fully transparent. Users have complained that ‘gas fees’ can quickly rack up.
6. OpenSea
OpenSea markets itself as the first and largest NFT marketplace, you can find all sorts of unique digital items at OpenSea. Besides digital art, there are collectibles, game items, domain names, even digital representations of physical assets. Essentially, OpenSea is like an eBay for NFTs with millions of assets organized into hundreds of categories.
OpenSea boasts that they have the lowest fees in the NFT space. They take 2.5% of the sales price. Also, there is no service fee for buyers, while others charge up to 3% on top of the sale price.
7. MakersPlace
MakersPlace, as in their name is a platform for creators to sell their work. The idea behind MakersPlace is enabling artists to fight back against the copyright breaches caused by Pinterest and other similar places. Today, images are easily copied and shared without control, making it hard for an artist to seek payment or even credit when due.
Similar to Etsy, MakersPlace takes a 15% cut from artists who sell their work on the platform. The NFTs can then be saved in their own crypto wallet or one of MakersPlace's inbuilt wallets, this is different from most platforms as they only allow you to connect your own wallets.
⌛ Conclusion
You may think it is too late to join the NFT movement, but more and more platforms to cater to the NFT crowd are being recently launched. Generally speaking, the art world is still booming. Art Basel the collection for world-leading legacy art shows estimated more than $67 billion in total art sales both online and offline in 2018. Out of that, $4.64 billion represent just online sales of traditional art. MakersPlace’s use of Blockchain will have it well-positioned later on. It will be key to its long-term success when more art is distributed online and digital art becomes more focused on.
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