The NFT space is evolving, and new use cases are constantly being applied to the innovative nature of non-fungible tokens. As they enter more industries, more users experiment with NFTs and their uses.
Some users are attracted to the money-making potential, others the collectibility, and some are driven to purchase through their desire to be a part of a new community. But whatever your reason for purchasing NFTs, you’ll need somewhere to buy them.
As NFTs have evolved, so have NFT marketplaces, from being a one-horse race to a hotly competitive industry. As a result, choosing a marketplace is a trickier task than it once was and the right one for you depends on your motives and reasons for using NFTs.
Top 4 most popular NFT marketplaces in 2024
OpenSea
OpenSea is one of the OGs of the NFT space. In fact, OpenSea remains one of the longest-standing platforms in the whole crypto industry. Founded in 2017, OpenSea was originally built to trade NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. As a result, the likes of Bored Ape Yacht Club, CryptoPunks and CryptoKitties have all been bought and sold on the OpenSea platform.
OpenSea isn’t just one of the most established NFT marketplaces, it’s common for OpenSea to have the highest daily trading volume in the NFT industry. Although, things have gotten a lot more competitive in recent years as the space has become more established and adopted.
To compete with new, up-and-coming marketplaces, OpenSea has expanded its offering to become compatible across multiple chains including Polygon, Solana and Klaytn. It still holds one of the strongest reputations in the web3 space and, as a result, has attracted angel investment from some big hitters including Mark Cuban, Tim Ferriss and Ashton Kutcher.
Blur
Blur is the newest NFT marketplace on this list. But despite this, Blur often tops OpenSea in terms of daily trading levels. The platform was able to gain traction as a result of their innovative airdrop approach.
Blur rewards users for interacting with their platform. The more users interact, the more they are rewarded via the BLUR token. These rewards operate seasonally; the current 4th season will end in June 2025.
Central to Blur’s rise has been its ability to target more advanced crypto users, and in particular, NFT traders. The marketplace’s interface is akin to screens found in the DeFi space and is not considered the friendliest for beginners.
Rather than being used to purchase your first NFT, Blur is more commonly used by those who want to make money out of NFTs. It supports crypto borrowing by using NFTs as collateral and dominates the NFT lending market.
Blur’s dominance was evident on the 15th of February 2023 when it surpassed OpenSea in daily NFT trading volume, an achievement that was considered unthinkable a few years ago. Nowadays, Blur more than competes with OpenSea’s massive sales volume despite having far fewer users and sales.
Magic Eden
Magic Eden positions itself as the leading community-centric NFT marketplace. After originally being built on Solana, it now supports Ethereum and Polygon. But a key selling point of Magic Eden is the fact that the marketplace also supports Bitcoin Ordinals, Bitcoin’s answer to NFTs.
This has allowed Magic Eden to become the third biggest marketplace behind Blur and OpenSea which is largely due to the rise of the Solana blockchain. Where OpenSea only supports a small selection of Solana wallets, Magic Eden supports all major Solana wallets and more.
Other factors that have contributed to Magic Eden’s competitiveness include the simple nature of the interface which makes it easy for beginners to use, zero listing fees, and a 2% transaction fee which is 0.5% lower than OpenSea.
Rarible
While Rarible hasn’t been around quite as long as OpenSea, it’s still considered one of the more established players in the NFT industry after being founded in 2020. Although not quite as popular as the other marketplaces mentioned, Rarible has carved out a niche as being the NFT marketplace for NFT artists.
A great example of Rarible’s artist-centric nature is their RARI token which allows users to have a say in the governance of the platform. Rarible also helps artists by allowing them to set royalties so creators can profit from future sales.
While OpenSea and Magic Eden are more common platforms for users to buy their first NFT, Rarible is more likely to be the place you create your first NFT. As a result, you’ll find NFTs on Rarible are more likely to be unique, often 1-of-1 artworks as opposed to utility NFTs that are part of a wider collection.
Finally, if you’re new to the world of NFTs, it’s crucial to be aware of the crypto scams that will target users on all of these platforms and other NFT marketplaces. It’s recommended you educate yourself about how to safely use crypto wallets and interact with platforms that won’t leave you susceptible to scams and fraudulent activity.
