Top 10 NFT Marketplaces

The Non-Fungible Token (NFT) Market grew by 299% in 2020. This has drawn a lot of attention and the market activity has increased significantly. But where do you trade them? Here in this post, we discuss the Top 10 NFT Marketplaces, in detail.

NFTs are digital crypto assets. However, they are very different from cryptocurrencies. All cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.) are fungible, which means they can be broken down into smaller chunks.

For example, 1 Bitcoin is equal to 100 million satoshis. Similarly, Ethereum can be broken down into smaller base units called Wei.

On the other hand, NFTs are unique and are a unique piece of data that cannot be broken down any further. They are scarce but transparently presently on the blockchain. They can represent just about anything –  from an education certificate, license, an American DJ album – anything.

Moreover, NFTs are also used as collectible and in-game purchases. Currently, these are the most popular types of NTFs, since it adds a whole new level to the gaming experience. Players are now able to have rights to certain characters or objects within a game, adding a new paradigm.

Top 10 NFT Marketplaces

There are thousands and thousands of NFTs available across the NFT marketplaces. However, you need to look at specific marketplaces for specific tokens, since due to the various token standards, not all NFT marketplaces can facilitate the same tokens.

The increasing popularity of NFTs has lead to a great number of NFT marketplaces popping up. Below we have mentioned the top most popular NFT marketplaces, however, we recommend you do your own research before trying out any of the platforms.

1. OpenSea

Launched – 2018

OpenSea was the first decentralized non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace for buying, selling, and trading NFTs. It calls itself the biggest marketplace for digital goods.

You can trade all sorts of unique digital items at the platform. The platform hosts digital art, there are collectibles, game items, domain names, even digital representations of physical assets. Basically, it is like an eBay for NFTs with innumerable assets organized into hundreds of categories.

Since its inception, OpenSea has experienced significant growth. It has over 17 thousand users now. Some of the big-name players expressing interest in the space have been Mark Cuban, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Chamath Palihapitiya have recently expressed interest in the space. Moreover, Logan Paul, a famous youtuber, announced the launch of his first NFT on Twitter, which went on to net him over $3.5 million.

When you talk of the decentralized web, there is no bigger marketplace than OpenSea. There are over 4 million assets, 135+ dapps, and 4,000 ETH in monthly volume,

2. Rarible

Launched – 2020

Rarible is a Moscow based platform Launched by Alex Salnikov and Alexei Falin back in early 2020. Fundamentally, it is a digital NTF marketplace focusing on art assets. In precise, it includes a marketplace for users to trade various digital collectibles or NFTs.

Rarible can also be used to create “minting” NFTs. This is a great deal for various content creators as they can now sell creations, such as books, music albums, movies, etc. as NFTs

Moreover, the artist might choose to then offer buyers a sneak peek of the content – a preview, trailer, or snippet – but release the full content only when a person purchases the relevant NFT. This has opened up the amazing opportunities for young talent and upcoming artists. It has thus reached a tally of over 24 thousand users.

However, scammers have been detected many-a-times and that’s why Rarible has created a verification process, to minimize the risk of dealing with a fake project.

In one of the biggest deals, Linsey Lohan launched her own profile on Rarible, selling her own creation ‘Bitcoin Lightning’ for just over $50,000. People trading art on Rarible earn some of the 75,000 RARI tokens which are distributed weekly, to encourage activity.

One of the most important aspects is that Rarible is placing a significant emphasis on creating a totally autonomous platform driven by community governance. Perhaps most notably, Rarible is also placing all its bets on creating an entirely autonomous platform, run through a community governance model. It is now shifting heavily towards a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), which will make the users in charge of all the decisions of the platform. This means Rarible’s RARI governance token is crucial.

The total incoming volume on the platform is over $9.92 Million.

3. NiftGateway

Launched – 2018

Nift Gateway allows you to buy crypto collectibles (“Nifties” as they call it) instantly using a credit card.  The platform facilitates nifty purchases for some of today’s most popular crypto-games and applications, including CryptoKitties and Gods Unchained. 

Buying a nifty on the platform is as simple as buying a baseball from a store. Go to the marketplace, pick a nifty, enter your credit card info and hit purchase. You’re done!

You can also choose where you want to keep this nifty, whether you need to send it to your Metamask wallet or your Nifty Gateway account.

Nifty Gateway was built by The Cock Foster Twins, but two other twins (albeit a bit more famous) came along and acquired it from them. Tyler and Cameron, the Winklevoss twins who Launched Gemini, and of course took their hefty lawsuit winnings from Zuckerberg. Their involvement helped turn Nifty Gateway into the center for digital art that it is today.

4. Superrare

Launched – 2017

When it comes to art collectors, they want the “real deal” and pay big money for it. So why not use a tool that can track the entire purchase and ownership history of a collectible, to find the “real” price for it.

With the help of the Ethereum blockchain, the entire history and origin of an art piece can be tracked. No one controls it and anyone can access it. The Superrare platform enables artists to create a piece of art and tokenize it. Which means it’s not just a token but, the new digital art is forever linked with a Nun-Fungible Token. This special Ethereum token is thus as unique as the art itself.

Superrare NFT Marketplace also allows the original creator of the art to collect a fee from resales, just like a royalty. Every time the NFT is sold, the creators earn a piece of it. Since the fees are accumulated as a function of the smart contract code, it guarantees an automatic royalty for an art, long after an artist leaves the possession.

All Superrare transactions are made through Ether, so you must buy it to use the platform. The users can connect with the platform using MetaMask.

The platform currently has 750 users with an incoming volume of over $2.93 Million.

5. TVK

Launched – 2019

Terra Virtua Kolekt or TVK is an immersive collectibles platform collaboration with Legendary Studios, Paramount Pictures and many other industry leaders. It is a NFT marketplace that allows a seamless cross-platform ecosystem for artists and collectors alike. Its partnership with mainstream digital houses has raised about  $2.6 million in token sales. This NFT crypto project has allowed digital assets to be viewed online, via the mobile app, and in a 3D environment using Augmented Reality.

The current daily volume on the platform is close to $24 million.

6. NBA Top shots

Launched – 2020


NBA Top Shot is an NFT Marketplace backed by the NBA. With Top Shots, a buy can own pieces of action called moments. A moment is an NBA highlight that is made a digital collectible and can be held onto or traded forever. 

The NFT acts as a digital certificate on the blockchain that gives the asset holder authenticity and ownership over the moment. 

Since its launch in January 2021, the daily sales have skyrocketed and reached an all time high of over $6 million on 24th January. It was started last year as a new trading forum and had a few thousand users. It was discovered by many as a Twitter trend when certain moments were traded were a great amount. CryptoSlam—a third-party tracking source that monitors marketplace transactions—shows 83 unique trades of at least $40,000, with six moments sold at above six figures, the most expensive being a Cosmic edition Series 1  LeBron James dunk went for $208,000.

During the first week of Feb 2021, the platform had just over $49 million in transactions all-time, with $46.4 million of that total coming in the previous 30 days. By the third week, the marketplace logged more than $47 million in sales in 24 hours. A month later, more than $370 million had exchanged hands between users on the marketplace to date, and millions more have been spent on packs. The result is a massive, highly competitive NFT marketplace  of trading moments, virtual cards and gaining exponential profits.

7. Axie Infinity

Launched – 2020

You can’t even begin to imagine how wealthy the 90s kids would be if Pokémon allowed them to profit from their pocket monsters as NFTs. 

Fast forward today, there exists a digital pet universe for gamers to prosper, in the blockchain gaming space. The game is Sky Mavis’ Axie Infinity. An addictive monster collecting experience that allows you to battle, raise, and collect fantasy creatures called Axies. Players can also become a land baron and use their personal kingdom to farm resources, gain AXS tokens, and go for dungeon raids. Your strengthened Axies or the land your cultivated land, can be sold whenever you see fit, which gives Axie Infinity the all-important element of true digital item ownership.

Even though it’s still an early access version, the game has quickly climbed unto becoming the #1 Ethereum (ETH) game by monthly and weekly active users. 

Axie Infinity’s achievements are many – 25,000+ ETH ($44,435,250+ USD) has been traded on the game’s in-house marketplace thus far. The most expensive Axie ever sold went for 300 ETH ($533,916+ USD), a virtual asset from the game was sold for 888.25 ETH ($1.5 million USD), and it regularly attracts 19,000+ monthly active onchain users.

8. Foundation

Launched – 2020

Foundation is a community-built digital collectibles platform. It has seen impressive growth gliding along the ongoing NFT wave. In the last month, the number of traders on the Foundation NFT marketplace has skyrocketed to almost 3,412, up by over 900%. 

Meanwhile, increasing the by over 1300% up to $9.16 million at the time of writing. The number of sales has shot up to almost 4,121 in the last 30-days, up by over 1175%. The average transaction on Foundation is approximately $2,221, if we look at the data for the past 30 days.

The Foundation NFT Marketplace runs on a community-led curation model after it invited the first 50 artists to the platform, then gifted each artist two invites to share with newcomers. The community team selects the artworks which are featured on the homepage, newsletters, and social channels. The platform aims at providing a home for the artists while pushing the space and the medium forward. They keep experimenting with new creative approaches, and centering marginalized voices.

Recently, well-known electronic music composer Richard D. James, known as Aphex Twin, minted his own audiovisual digital collectible on the platform. It was quickly snapped up for over 72 ETH or over just over $127,000. Interestingly, the artist said that proceeds would used for environmental causes.

Another noteworthy sale was when the Russian pop group Pussy Riot, like Aphex, pledged to contribute the proceeds to domestic violence charities in their native Russia. The video they minted, titled Terrestrial Paradise, was bought for around $175,000. 

9. Aavegotchi

Launched – 2020

Aavegotchi was launched in July 2020 by the team behind Aave, a mission offering new alternatives to yield farming. This project mixes entertaining game mechanics with the platform to support a new kind of DeFi experience for its users.

Aavegotchis are Ethereum-based crypto-collectors built on NFT technology.  Aavegotchis generate tokens from Aave after a user invests in it. As time passes by, an Aavegotchi helps to create value, by generating interest on the assets invested in the Aavegotchi, and by interacting with the large Aavegotchi metaverse.

This is a unique combination of decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFTs. It offers an opportunity to generate returns and long-term profits. 

This platform is revolutionizing the blockchain gaming sector with DeFi models such as collateral stakes, dynamic rarity, rarity farming, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO), and smart contracts. In simpler terms, the goal is to use DeFi and yield farming to create NFTs that have improved value over time.

The Aavegotchi platform is a NFT marketplace in itself, as it allows investors to buy the NFT Aavegotchis and other NFT values of the platform. It is an amazing example of a successful all-inclusive blockchain game that also supports investing in platform NFTs through an in-house marketplace.

10. Atomic Market

Launched – 2021

This marketplace is an integral part of the AtomicAssets hub. It allows users to list their assets for selling or put them up for auction, while also allowing them to purchase or bid on other listed assets.

Unlike other marketplaces, if you put an asset up for sale, you don’t have to immediately send it over to a marketplace account.Instead, the trade offer feature of AtomicAssets is used. When an asset is listed for sale, a trade offer for the respective asset is sent to the marketplace contract. This offer is only accepted when a buyer purchases the asset.

This helps you continue to use your asset normally in dapps or use it for other trade offers, while it is listed on the marketplace waiting to be bought.

The marketplace is designed to be fully independent of its parent network. The 2% fee taken from each sale doesn’t not go to anyone but to whichever marketplace facilitates the listing and the purchase of the sale.

All the marketplaces using the AtomicMarket contract share the same liquidity pool. So if an asset is listed for sale on Marketplace A, it could still be shown and bought on Marketplace B (if that happens, both marketplaces would get 1% fees each). Therefore, rather than battling with each other, marketplaces can benefit from each other.

A dapp might want to integrate a marketplace within their application, but only for the assets of their collection. They can still use the AtomicMarket for that.

After its launch in January 2021, it has gained over $33,692,276 in volume.

Do check out our other curated lists as well:

Top 10 NFT Crypto Projects

Top 10 Low Cap Altcoins

Top 5 Hidden Gems Crypto

The second part of the list of top altcoins to buy on Kucoin will be released soon. Join our discord, and telegram for quality altcoins signals based on technical analysis and fundamental research.

Disclaimer:

Altcoins listed in this article are based on the author’s research. The author is not holding any of these top altcoins. Always do your own research before investing in any cryptocurrency.