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OpenSea is by far the most popular marketplace that lets users mint, buy, trade, and sell non-fungible tokens (NFTs). More than 1.4 million wallets have traded NFTs on the marketplace to date, moving $23.5 billion in volume. That's $5 billion more than the closest competitor according to DappRadar.
But as much as it's famous for its success, OpenSea has also had some legendary problems. It began in 2020 as the NFT marketplace allowed users to 'mint' NFTs free of charge and without approval. OpenSea later admitted this led to plagiarised works, fake collections, and spam making up '80%' of newly minted NFTs.
In January this year, OpenSea reimbursed $1.8 million to users who accidentally sold NFTs for way below their real value. Bloomberg discovered that at least one wallet had made over $800,000 by exploiting an OpenSea bug and then reselling just five NFTs (three of which were from the ultra-exclusive Bored Ape Yacht Club).
NFT sales boomed in 2021 to hit $25 billion – a massive leap from the $95 million throughout 2020. OpenSea might have led the explosion but there are many more NFT marketplaces vying to take its place.
Coinbase launched in 2012 and with over 89 million registered users has become one of the top crypto exchanges. The company is launching its own NFT marketplace, and its website still reads 'coming soon' in January 2022 it already registered a waitlist of 1.1 million people – OpenSea has just over 1 million active users.
Coinbase NFT will be peer-to-peer and initially build on the Ethereum network, with plans to support multiple blockchains in the future. Coinbase has already announced partnerships with collections like Lazy Lions and DeadFellaz.
FTX's marketplace for NFTs launched in October last year, but with significant differences to Coinbase NFT. The NFT marketplace is not peer-to-peer, meaning that collectors forgo direct ownership of their assets as their data is recorded and stored on its FTX network. It also launched on the Solana blockchain, rather than Ethereum.
The greater centralised control on FTX NFT means the platform implements its own bidding mechanisms. This gives less autonomy but allows FtX NFT to charge a lower fee structure of 2% compared to Coinbase's 2.5%.
EverGrow Coin is rolling out a new NFT marketplace on the BNB Chain that offers a brand-new protocol – NFT lending. This will allow NFT owners to put up their digital assets as collateral in exchange for crypto loans, which can be used to generate a profit in various DeFi projects.
NFT lending offers a brand-new way for NFT collectors to generate passive income from their assets without actually selling them. Since the EverGrow Coin NFT marketplace is also housed on the BNB Chain users will see far reduced gas fees compared to marketplaces built on Ethereum.
EverGrow Coin itself is a reflection token that pays out daily BUSD to investors, financed by a 14% tax on transactions. To date, it's paid out over $35.5 million to coin holders (it only launched in September last year) and the NFT marketplace is just one of a suite of new applications to generate further rewards to EverGrow Coin investors.
Rarible started out with monthly trading volumes higher than OpenSea, but it struggled to keep up during the 2021 boom in NFTs. But while OpenSea has since found itself mired in scandals Rarible has gone about building in strong utilities that make it a stronger rival in 2022.
Rarible has already launched a governance token – RARI – which is something OpenSea has yet to deliver on. Rarible also has launched support for NFTs on the Flow and Tezos blockchains, with plans to support Solana and Polygon in the near future.
Zora is a lesser-known NFT marketplace that doesn't register in DappRadar's top 25 NFT marketplaces by trading volume. But its permissionless 'on-chain' platform has attracted some historic purchases – like PleasrDAO's $4 million buy of the original doge meme NFT.
Zora's manifesto aims to cut out the middlemen and monopolies that cut average traders out of the market. It does that by acting as a 'media registry protocol' rather than an NFT marketplace. The benefits are zero fees for listing, buying, or selling NFTs and greater freedom for artists to set their own prices and collect royalties on resells of their artwork.
OpenSea undoubtedly remains the top NFT marketplace by volume and trades to date. But its rapid expansion has come at the expense of security and ease of use. Unless the platform patches up its errors these could become the next top NFT marketplace in 2022.
