3 Best NFT Marketplaces: Which is Best For Me?

What we will cover is a brief background to NFTs and what they are, and then dive deeper into the best NFT marketplaces for interested investors and artists. 

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are a varied range of unique digital assets that cannot be exchanged.

The blockchain platform stores the historical ownership of such NFTs. 

NFT markets are exactly that, markets or platforms where NFTs are bought and sold all through the blockchain for authenticity. 

There are many NFT markets out there, but we are only going to focus on the three best NFT marketplaces with a fourth up-and-coming market that we feel is worth looking into.

1. Nifty Gateway

The Cock Foster brothers founded Nifty Gateway.

It’s an extremely popular and well-known blockchain-based, NFT marketplace.

They partnered with the Winklevoss twin brothers who own their own blockchain company. 

In 2019 this partnership was made official. 

In 2020 the Nifty marketplace made sales of digital art that totaled more than $12 million within nine months after its launch.

Between March and December 2020, they achieved a 50% month-over-month growth. 

High-profile artists like Beeple and Trevor Jones feature their art on Nifty Gateway, this boosted the sale on Nifty. 

Nifty Gateway is a marketplace for the fine arts and collectibles that are highly sought after in this current day and age. 

Nifty also offers limited edition collectibles regularly through drop sessions scheduled with artists. 

Some of the featured artworks were by popular artists like Kenny Scharf, Cey Adams, and Jon Burgerman.

Furthermore, it also featured your crypto-game collectibles like the very popular CryptoKitties.

These were some of the first blockchain games in the world.

Dapper Labs, a leading developer in the NFT market developed CryptoKitties. 

Due to Nifty’s online blockchain, this allows you to exclusively own a digital item indefinitely. 

This marketplace allows you to buy, sell, trade user to user, and even showcase your Nifties.

Drop Sessions

Every three weeks drop sessions occur. 

These drop sessions contain Nifties sold directly from the creator and consist of newly created items that are available for a limited time.

Nifty is very popular so it would give an artist good exposure. 

Their platform is user-friendly as it allows users to buy and sell using debit or credit cards. 

Other NFT marketplaces need you to make purchases out of your Ethereum wallet that has a cryptocurrency of either Ethereum or Bitcoin. 

The Nifty platform features some of the most popular NFT artists, crypto-games, and applications in the market today. 

Due to the in-house Nifty blockchain that has built-in features to permanently and securely keep digital assets, Nifty has a “safe place” for digital goods to be sold and owned, thereby creating “eternal ownership.” 

Drop exhibitions are a great way to collect high-end limited edition digital items at a lower price because the sale of these on the secondary market is higher.

For Whom is This Market Best Suited? 

The Nifty marketplace caters to both the artist and collector. 

For the artists, Nifty creates an exclusive market that is popular. 

And for the collector, there is an opportunity to buy limited edition items that will increase in value faster than your normal digital items.

2. SuperRare

The second marketplace we will look at is SuperRare, which is a social platform. 

This truly lives up to its namesake. 

This market deals in very rare, unique, and single edition digital artworks. 

This platform is for those who want a simple NFT market experience with a twist. 

The artworks on this site will challenge your way of thinking but open your eyes to the endless possibilities of the NFT marketplace. 

According to an article posted in news.bitcoin.com on September 2020, SuperRare had sold rare artwork to 178 countries worldwide. 

Of these, collectors received a total of $565 000 with artists receiving a whopping $ 1,8 million to date.  

SuperRare’s market focus and drive are on the secondary market because this benefits the artist in the long run as the 10% earned on resale over some time forms a sustainable passive income. 

Along with this, their market structure is peer-to-peer for NFTs. 

These NFTs use the Ethereum (ERC-721) platform only. 

As an up-and-coming marketplace, they are still new to the game of NFTs but have specific criteria for artists wanting to showcase their artwork on SuperRare. 

Payments In SuperRare

Ethereum wallet is a facility through which payments and purchases are made on SuperRare.

If you have an Ethereum wallet you can simply connect this to your SuperRare account however, if you don’t then you need to go through the process of setting one up. 

You may only make transactions on SupeRare via an Ethereum wallet. 

SuperRare is still in the beginner phase of its marketplace. 

This does mean a smaller variety of artworks available to collectors, but for up-and-coming artists, it’s advantageous to showcase their work in a niche market before the marketplace becomes popular (provided you meet the strict criteria). 

If your artwork is under an ID token of 4000 there is no transaction fee.

SuperRare’s Market

This market is best suited for artists because of their commitment to secondary market sales. 

These sales will benefit artists in the long run since their artwork’s value would grow over time, much like the sale of vinyl’s which cost much more now than in the 1960s.

3. Rarible

Rarible is the most user-friendly and easy to jump into site, but the art doesn’t have the same quality as SuperRare or Nifty Gateway as it consists mostly of start-up artists.

However, the potential of this marketplace is very encouraging.

One just needs to dig deep (or scroll!) into the marketplace to find the valuable buys.

In October 2020, Rarible reached its benchmark of $5 million of monthly NFT sales and in one day they made $1.5 million. 

This is a platform where a member can create, sell or collect digital items through a secure blockchain. 

Sellers on Rarible can create multiple NFTs for one image thus allowing them to sell it multiple times, or they can trade a single item which is then considered to be rare.

Rarible is a digital NFT platform with a particular focus on art assets. 

This a marketplace that is also community-owned.  

It gives the artists flexible royalty opportunities that artists can set at a percentage to receive lifetime benefits on resales. 

There are only verified creators on Rarible. 

This verification process consists of badges awarded to creators who qualify. 

Creators must provide proof that their artwork is authentic and show an active dedication to Rarible. 

Multiple Minting

Rarible also offers a service of called multiple minting to artists.

This service gives them the ability to tokenize their artwork and create an NFT for it. 

This multiple minting means that artists use many forms of their creations on Rarible. 

They also use the NFT ERC-721 tokens, and this is a contract standard hosted through the blockchain of Ethereum. 

There are some drawbacks to Rarible, the obvious being that it’s full of start-up artists, so the art quality is not up to the standard of other more popular marketplaces. 

Along with this, you have to use either Bitcoin or Ether.

Coinbase is a platform from which Bitcoin and Ether can be purchased

The Bitcoin or Ether is then used as an investment to buy Rarible (RARI tokens). 

These are the world’s first form of governance tokens in the NFT spectrum and they power the community-run platform or Rarible. 

Every Monday at noon San Francisco time 75 000 tokens are distributed to creators and collectors alike who had transactions in the past week and while this is not the end of the world it is worth keeping in mind.

Rarible’s Market

For those of you who are thinking about getting into NFTs as either a collector or an artist, for the first time, Rarible is the marketplace for you. 

Their initiative for the first community-owned NFT marketplace makes it unique.

Runner-up: MakersPlace

MakersPlace launched in August 2018.

It’s one of the up-and-coming platforms in the NFT marketplaces. 

In December 2020, their monthly art sales peaked at a mind-blowing $8.2 million compared to $2.6 million in the month before. 

MakersPlace’s mission statement is “truly unique digital creations, by the world’s most creative minds”  

Their focus is on the artists or the creators before the collectors. 

They recognize the need for artists to have a place where they can showcase their art securely and make money without the hassle of the admin behind NFTs. 

Blockchain System of MakersPlace

MakersPlace uses blockchain in its authentication process and they will not authenticate copies of artworks. 

Like Nifty Gateway, MakersPlace facilitates drop sessions with artists to exclusively showcase their artworks for sale. 

Although initially, in their start-up it was a complicated process to register art by the creators, they sought to simplify features to create a pleasant user experience. 

The blockchain system requires every creation to have its digital wallet.

So when creating multiple artworks this can get confusing.

MakersPlace provides and manages the digital wallets for every creator. 

Thus, MakersPlace focuses on the user experience of its platform. 

For collectors, MakersPlace has made things simple. 

With the knowledge that in this day and age NFTs and digital wallets are still new to society in general, MakersPlace has partnered with Stripe to support debit and credit card transactions worldwide. 

MakersPlace will create a digital wallet to store your creation after the purchase is made.

If you want to take full ownership of the wallet, it is handed over to you. 

MakersPlace is an invitation-only platform so, to join you have to contact their Discord community. 

It offers their artists 10% royalties on the resale of their artwork. 

MakersPlace has a community of 20,000 plus members who showcase artworks.

Furthermore, they also put these artworks on other digital marketplaces.

Why is MakersPlace Recommended as a Platform to Keep an Eye On?

Well, it’s currently ranked in the top ten NFT marketplace platforms and their attention to the user experience will help them go a long way to securing both artists and buyers alike. 

In addition, MakersPlace showcases artworks on other marketplaces thus giving their artists good exposure, all in a secure blockchain platform. 

They are also a growing platform aiming at out-of-the-box thinking like creating a virtual reality gallery to enhance the collector’s experience of their artworks.

Some Trivia

CryptoPunks are pixelated characters that have been around for a long time and are resold at a rapidly rising rate. 

HashMasks are hot on the heels of CryptoPunks in sales. 

Christie’s has recently teamed up with Beeple to bring Crypto art to their studio. 

They will be showcasing Beeple’s artwork called The First 5000 days which is a compilation of all his creations over time into one collage. 

Key Takeways

The most popular form of NFT in the market is digital art. 

Nifty Gateway and SuperRare topped digital art sales in 2020. 

Both these markets accounted for most of the sales volumes for that year. 

NFTs are slowly becoming recognized as virtual art galleries or dealers that curate art pieces. 

If you are looking at entering the NFT market as an artist, you need to have a broad audience because without good social media coverage and popularity you won’t gain any traction on your digital artwork. 

One thing to note in the NFT market, is that the value of a digital asset does appreciate over time. 

However, it’s not a get-rich overnight scheme, especially if you don’t have at least $20 000 lying around. 

However, with that said, you will reap the rewards in the future as NFTs are becoming the “new normal” in the art and collectibles world.

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