In this guide, we explore 7 leading NFT marketplaces including OpenSea, Blur, and UniSat, focusing on their offerings across three key blockchains: Ethereum, Solana, and Bitcoin.
Written by: Anatol Antonovici | Updated December 14, 2023
Reviewed by: Mike Martin
Fact checked by: Ryan Grace
In 2024, there are over 100 NFT marketplaces. In this guide, we’ll highlight the seven most popular and liquid platforms for trading non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Table of Contents
🍒 tasty takeaways
While Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL) are the leading blockchains for NFTs, Bitcoin ordinals have recently surged in popularity, momentarily taking the top spot.
OpenSea is the largest all-in-one NFT marketplace, but Blur has dethroned it as the largest NFT platform by trading volume, although it focuses on Ethereum NFTs only.
Previous leaders, such as Rarible and SuperRare, have lost momentum, while Gemini’s Nifty Gateway is used only for curated NFT art.
- Magic Eden and Tensor are the largest Solana NFT marketplaces, while UniSat is the go-to platform to trade and store Bitcoin NFTs.
Summary
| Marketplace | Features |
|---|---|
| OpenSea | Extensive peer-to-peer NFT trading. |
| Blur | Largest NFT marketplace for Ethereum-based NFTs. |
| Magic Eden | Decentralized Solana NFT marketplace with high liquidity. |
| LooksRare | Community-governed Ethereum NFT marketplace with native token rewards. |
| CryptoPunks | Iconic collection of unique NFTs on Ethereum. |
| UniSat | Leading Bitcoin ordinal-oriented NFT marketplace. |
| Sotheby's | Auction house featuring Bitcoin ordinal collections. |
What Are NFT Marketplaces?
NFT marketplaces are digital platforms where users can trade NFTs, offering the ability to showcase digital assets and store them in either custodial or non-custodial crypto wallets.
Some NFT marketplaces even provide the option to create NFTs directly within the platform. These platforms often levy transaction fees, contributing to their substantial annual revenue, sometimes reaching tens of millions in USD.
All-in-one NFT Marketplaces
NFTs represent a diverse market, and they vary significantly both in their technical foundation – the underlying blockchain technology – and in their digital representation.
Some marketplaces host all categories of NFTs, supporting multiple blockchains. These are a great choice for beginners.
How to Buy NFTs
To buy and sell NFTs, you must first have a self-custody crypto wallet. The tastycrypto wallet connects to dozens of NFT marketplaces through WalletConnect.
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#1 OpenSea
OpenSea is a peer-to-peer (P2P) NFT marketplace that enables the exchange of NFTs between non-custodial wallets. Though OpenSea claims to be decentralized, it does not operate a decentralized governance system. It is one of the oldest NFT trading platforms, and has facilitated a record 65+ million NFT sales to date.
In 2021, amidst the explosion in NFT popularity, OpenSea held nearly 90% market share, but Blur overtook it as the leader in 2023.
Still, OpenSea remains one of the most widely used NFT marketplaces, providing a user-friendly experience and supporting multiple chains, including Ethereum and its layer 2 scaling solutions – Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism – as well as Solana, Binance’s BNB Chain, Avalanche, Base, and Klaytn.
Source: OpenSea
#2 OKX NFT Marketplace
OKX NFT Marketplace is an OpenSea-like NFT marketplace developed by OKX, currently the fifth-largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume.
OKX’s platform supports the same blockchains as OpenSea, but it also lists Bitcoin-based NFTs, which leverage the so-called ordinals.
🍒 Bitcoin Ordinals Explained: How NFTs Are Made on Bitcoin
As of today, OKX’s decentralized service is the second-largest NFT marketplace by monthly trading volume.
Source: okx.com
Ethereum NFT Marketplaces
The first NFT was minted on Namecoin, but it’s the Ethereum blockchain that has realized the full potential of NFTs by offering a dedicated token standard, ERC-721.
🍒 Crypto Token Standards Guide: ERC vs BRC vs BEP vs TRC
This has propelled Ethereum as the dominant underlying chain for years, and many NFT marketplaces focus exclusively on Ethereum-based NFTs.
#3 Blur
Blur positions itself as an NFT marketplace aimed at professional NFT traders. Even though it focuses on Ethereum-based NFTs only, it’s still the largest NFT marketplace by trading volume as of today, facilitating over $500 million in sales during the last month alone, according to data from DappRadar. It currently accounts for about 80% of the Ethereum-based NFT market, leaving OpenSea way behind with only 17% market share.
Source: TheBlock.com
Blur has quickly grown in popularity due to its user-friendly interface, low transaction fees, increasing liquidity for NFTs, and generous incentives paid in the native token, BLUR.
Source: blur.io
BLUR Token - BLUR
The native cryptocurrency for Blur is BLUR.
Solana NFT Marketplaces
While Ethereum has been dominating the NFT ecosystem for years and hosts popular NFTs, including Beeple’s NFT artwork which sold for a record $69 million, other blockchains have also added support for NFTs by developing dedicated token standards.
Solana has attracted many NFT developers due to its efficiency. At the beginning of December 2023, Solana NFTs briefly dethroned Ethereum for the first time, according to data from CryptoSlam.
#4 Magic Eden
Magic Eden is the go-to decentralized marketplace for Solana-based NFTs. While it has been recently overtaken by Tensor, which accounts for 60% of Solana NFT sales, it still has more unique wallet users.
Magic Eden initially facilitated the trading of Solana NFTs, but it has since added support for Ethereum NFTs and Bitcoin ordinals.
Source: MagicEden
Community-Oriented Decentralized Marketplaces
Every mentioned NFT project, such as OpenSea and Blur, claim to be decentralized platforms facilitating NFT trades between non-custodial wallets. However, many believe these platforms are not truly decentralized.
The trend of absolute decentralization was made popular by LooksRare, which has been governed by the community and has distributed all revenue back to traders and creators.
#5 LooksRare
LooksRare is a decentralized marketplace for Ethereum NFTs. It rewards its users in its native token, LOOKS. This is one of the first NFT platforms to have a native token for incentives.
LooksRare once competed with OpenSea, but it has lost momentum after rumors of wash trading. LOOKS now trades at $0.09, while it peaked at over $7 in 2022.
Still, LooksRare is the 15th largest NFT marketplace by trading volume, as per DappRadar. Besides facilitating NFT trades, the platform offers several games that reward players.
LooksRare Token – LOOKS
Bitcoin Ordinals Marketplaces
The Bitcoin ordinal frenzy is at its peak at the time of writing. Ordinals are not only used for NFT-like assets, but for fungible crypto tokens as well through the so-called BRC-20 standard.
In December 2023, popular auction house Sotheby’s announced the first sale of a Bitcoin Ordinal collection – BitcoinShrooms, a project designed by artist Shroomtoshi.
#6 UniSat
UniSat has quickly grown into one of the largest Bitcoin ordinal-oriented NFT marketplaces, with 30-day volume figures surging 90% to over $45 million.
The platform offers a marketplace dashboard and a proprietary browser wallet to store ordinals. It competes with Ordinals Wallet as the go-to marketplace for Bitcoin-based NFTs.
Source: UniSat
Specialized Marketplaces
Besides general NFT marketplaces that host all kinds of NFTs, including digital art, digital collectibles, metaverse / Web3 assets, and game items, there are specialized markets that offer only a certain collection or type of NFTs.
Some of the most popular specialized NFT markets are CryptoPunks, Axie Marketplace (which displays game items for the video game Axie Infinity), and NBA Top Shots (which displays Flow-based NFTs representing video clips showing basketball shots).
#7 CryptoPunks
CryptoPunks is one of the most popular NFT collections. It consists of 10,000 unique NFTs that combine several elements with different rarity levels. Celebrities and high-net-worth individuals, like Jay Z, Serena Williams, Snoop Dogg, and Mark Cuban, have spent millions to acquire a CryptoPunk. While CryptoPunks are listed on marketplaces like OpenSea, the collection has a dedicated app that is in the top 10 largest NFT marketplaces by trading volume.
Source: CryptoPunks
Comparison of Best NFT Marketplaces
Here is a quick comparison between the best NFT marketplaces for 2024:
Want to invest in NFT projects? Here are our top 7 NFT Tokens.
FAQs
An NFT marketplace is a digital platform where users can buy, sell, and sometimes mint and burn NFTs, featuring dedicated pages for displaying NFTs and managing them through custodial or non-custodial wallets.
Choosing the ideal NFT marketplace largely hinges on the specific types of NFTs you’re interested in trading. OpenSea, known for its extensive support across multiple blockchain platforms and its intuitive interface, continues to be a leading choice for a broad range of NFT transactions. However, certain marketplaces are tailored to excel with specific categories of NFTs, offering more specialized services and features.
Bitcoin ordinals are digital assets that derive from the information inscribed on Bitcoin satoshis. Thanks to ordinals, one can create Bitcoin NFTs with the digital representation being inscribed directly on the Bitcoin protocol, making it censorship-resistant and secure.
There are dedicated apps for Bitcoin ordinals, including Unisat and Ordinals Wallet. Some NFT marketplaces, such as OKX NFT Marketplace and Magic Eden, also support Bitcoin NFTs.
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Anatol Antonovici
6+ years of experience writing for crypto brands and blockchain firms, including Coindesk, Cointelegraph, Bitcoinist, CryptoPotato, Algorand, and OTCTrade.com