Digital technologies have changed the definition of what it means to be human, and the relationships between physical presence, virtual identities, and digital entities have become more fragmented. The field of NFT artwork and collections dates back to 2017. Currently, NFTs account for more than 14% of total Ethereum network usage.

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1. Overview of the six major platforms

OpenSea

Founded in 2018, OpenSea is a blockchain-based global marketplace for buying and selling digital items. OpenSea is positioned as an industry-leading decentralized exchange (Decentralized Exchange, DEX), providing peer-to-peer (peer-to-peer) Ethereum homogeneous token (NFT) transactions. The comprehensive platform sells a variety of digital goods, including digital artwork, encrypted collectibles, game items, etc. On the OpenSea platform, users can buy, sell and exchange tokens with anyone in the world.

Nifty Gateway 

Nifty Gateway is a regulated, non-fungible token (NFT) money marketplace built on a USD exchange platform utilizing Gemini's backend infrastructure. On the platform, users can purchase NFTs with credit cards and cash them out directly into their bank accounts when they sell.

Nifty Gateway is an extremely active and innovative platform. Last year, USD-based non-fungible token exchange Nifty announced the completion and launch of its Nifty Gateway 2.0. The platform allows U.S. users to withdraw fiat currency and plans to roll out the same functionality to international users. All other services of the platform are now available to international users. Users only need to register an email address to register on Nifty and start trading NFTs. Recently, Nifty Gateway has also updated the hidden function - Prepaid ETH, hoping that Ethereum users and credit card users will be in the same interaction speed environment, and it only takes one second to see whether they have received artwork.

MakersPlace

Launched in 2016, MakersPlace is a full-service blockchain-based platform for artists and creators to mint NFTs representing their work. With the help of blockchain technology, every digital creation acquired by collectors through MakersPlace is a unique digital creation signed and issued by the creator. Even if someone else copied the digital work, it would not be an authentic or original signed copy. The platform connects artists with art lovers and collectors through a marketplace and a network of partners. With MakersPlace, artists are better able to capture the full potential value of digital works.

Last year, MakersPlace officially launched after a year-long beta test. The founders of the platform, Dannie Chu and Yash Nelapati, had experience in Pinterest. They discovered the shortcomings of Pinterest in providing creators with a commercial approach, so they founded MakersPlace as a trading platform for digital works.

Rarible

Rarible is an NFT issuance and trading platform that creates and sells digital collectibles secured by the blockchain. The platform is an open-source, non-custodial platform for users to mint, sell and create collectibles. Any user can enter Rarible, create and display their own artwork, and can also use Ethereum tokens to purchase artwork for collection. Users own the ownership and intellectual property rights of tokens. Buyers and sellers can trade collectibles at almost negligible cost on the Rarible NFT marketplace.

Rarible also released its own original sound governance token ERC-20 in 2020, which improved the sales process and sales conditions in this market and reduced the cost of users to almost zero.

Super Rare

Founded in 2017, SuperRare is known as an Internet digital art market with a global network of digital artists, with nearly 700 artists. Super Rare is based on blockchain technology and follows the ERC721 standard. The entire history and origin of artworks can be tracked on the distributed ledger, and no one can cheat.

Rare digital artworks can be easily created, sold, and collected on this platform. The platform enables artists to obtain new sources of income, and provides collectors with a place to store or trade artwork assets, guaranteeing the scarcity and originality of works, and solving issues such as copyright traceability. Artists can auction off their creations or sell them for a fixed price. Once NFT is sold, it can be resold at any price on various NFT trading platforms. The platform has come a long way since its inception.

VIV3

VIV3, which was just released this year, is the first comprehensive market on the Flow public chain. The founding of VIV3 is the start of a shift from physical ownership to digital ownership, with the aim of empowering a billion people to create, trade and own the world's most valuable works. Flow is a highly scalable and composable smart contract platform that can provide the performance required by mainstream applications without compromising decentralization.

Artists, game studios, and brands use VIV3 to mint unique tokens on the Flow blockchain, each representing their digital creation as an NFT. These NFTs are purchased by fans, collectors, gamers and digital asset traders.

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2. Project Features

Currently, OpenSea is the largest decentralized marketplace for digital goods, with more than 700 items, including trading card games like Gods Unchained and CryptoSpells, and collectible games like Axie Infinity and CryptoKitties. Commodities have multiple categories, fully tokenized and digitized. Since proof of ownership and transaction records are permanently stored on the blockchain, users can become legal owners once they pay. Unlike physical items, the item cannot be stolen and sold elsewhere, as the record of ownership and all subsequent ownership records are permanently recorded on the blockchain.

NiftyGateway is good at spotting hot spots in celebrity collaborations, creating and publishing exclusive tokenized collectibles. The company launches new NFTs approximately every three weeks. More representative works include the collection that the platform collaborated with former UFC women's lightweight champion Cris Cyborg and photographer Lyle Owerko. This year, Nifty Gateway tweeted that the creator of Rick & Morty would also be selling its NFT artwork on Ethereum.

MakersPlace provides a platform for artists to sell their works of art online. Artists do not need to have a deep understanding of blockchain technology. They only need to provide a photo ID to obtain the generated ERC-20 tokens in MakersPlace for their works. trade. Artists can keep currency in their own digitally encrypted "wallets," or they can choose to use a wallet provided by MakersPlace.

At the same time, MakersPlace will also generate blockchain fingerprints for each work of artists and creators, proving the identity and source of the work, and making fingerprint verification a symbol of the uniqueness of artworks.

What distinguishes Rarible from ordinary NFT trading platforms such as OpenSea or SuperRare is its decentralization. Decentralized exchanges delegate governance to all those who hold governance tokens, such as Compound’s $COMP , and the only way to earn these governance tokens is to buy them on crypto exchanges. While these tokens are nominally used for governance, many holders actually use them for profit. The decentralized model coupled with the governance token allows users to manage the development and decision-making of the platform, allowing the most active players to vote for any platform upgrade and participate in management and review.

Counting the advantages of Rarible, it is not difficult to find that the platform greatly facilitates the process of users creating and minting their own digital tokens. The threshold is low, and it provides a convenient user experience for non-coders, and the transaction cost is low in the peer-to-peer mode. .

What makes SuperRare unique is that while anyone can buy and hold Ethereum tokens, only invited artists can create artwork on the platform. To apply to join the network as an artist, an application form must be filled out. SuperRare requires that all artwork created on the platform must be original and must not be tokenized elsewhere on the Internet. The high threshold requirements for artists to settle in largely guarantee the quality of artworks.

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3. Product category

With the widest range of categories, the largest number of transferable digital collections, and the best prices, OpenSea is an excellent and secure platform for specific blockchain assets. The platform has built an extremely active developer community by attracting passionate users. OpenSea mainly sells digital artwork, encrypted collectibles, game items and other digital assets built on the Ethereum ERC-721 and ERC-1155 standards, including trading card games such as Gods Unchained and CryptoSpells and Axie Infinity and CryptoKitties (CryptoKitties). ) and other collectible games. OpenSea is also the main marketplace for big games like My Crypto Heroes, Etheremon Adventure, CryptoVoxels, ChainBreakers, CryptoBeasties, Ether Kingdoms, etc.

The Nifty Gateway platform can be used to purchase and manage NFTs. Currently supported cryptocurrency games and applications include CryptoKitties, OpenSea, Gods Unchained and other projects. Nifty Gateway has definitely made waves in cryptocurrencies over the past year.

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Picasso's Bull

MakersPlace is powered by blockchain technology to provide digital artists such as proof of authenticity, ownership and scarcity.

Through MakersPlace, creators can better obtain the full underlying value of digital works. MakersPlace has partnered with thousands of amazing digital artists to help them trade their unique artwork. The platform is easy to use and the transaction process is very smooth, providing a one-stop comprehensive experience for both shoppers and sellers.

Artwork creation is active on Rarible, for example, where billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban sold his encrypted artwork NFT "The RollUp 2021." Cointelegraph has also conducted single-page NFT auctions of well-known works of art on its platform, including "The Last ICO (The Last ICO)" inspired by Italian painter Leonardo da Vinci's work "The Last Supper", according to French painter Henri Marty "Silent Disco (Silent Disco)" adapted from La Danse's work "La Danse" and so on.

The artwork on SuperRare’s platform is positioned as high-end, and has high requirements for artists to settle in, which guarantees the high quality of the artwork to a certain extent. It hurts, SuperRare’s good community building and regular high-quality digital art exhibitions have effectively expanded the coverage of digital art, and gradually become the cornerstone and standard of the digital art industry. SuperRare's on-chain art gallery has functions such as exhibitions and auctions of offline art galleries, and uses NFT to ensure the originality of works and protect the intellectual property rights of artists.

SuperRare held its China debut in Shanghai with ArtGee, ChainNews and Digital Renaissance, and invited ten mainstream encryption artists with diverse styles and creative techniques to exhibit, including Pak, Esteban Diacono, etc. The event is dedicated to promoting and raising public awareness of NFT artworks, bridging the gap between artists and people in the blockchain field.

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4. Token release

Currently, only the digital collection and trading platform Rarible among the six major platforms has released its own native token RARI.

RARI is an ERC-20 governance token released by Rarible in July 2020. RARI integrates several hotspots of DeFi + NFT in 2020, combining digital collections with farming income and liquid mining. Users who use the platform can get RARI agent currency governance as a reward. RARI mainly focuses on user-generated works of art, using NFT to provide proof of provenance and guarantee the intellectual property rights of users' new artwork. In addition, RARI improves the sales process and sales conditions in this market, reduces the cost to users to almost zero, and incentivizes user participation.

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5. Commission Collection

At present, compared with other traditional platforms, OpenSea charges relatively higher commissions, the buyer’s transaction fee is about 2.5%, and other commission charges, such as game props, need to charge 7.5% of the game project side. Sotheby's and Christie's auction art collections charge a buyer's commission of about 12-25%, and a seller's commission of about 2%-9%. As far as the field of art is concerned, the commission price is relatively low.

Makersplace encourages artists to sell their works on the platform and takes a 15% commission on digital art transactions to make a profit. The Rarible marketplace recommends that creators set the copyright fee amount at around 10%, 20% and 30%.

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6. Development Team

In January 2018, Alex Atallah and Devin Finzer laid the foundation for the OpenSea platform. With backgrounds in Palantir, UC Berkeley, Google, Stanford, Facebook, and Pinterest, the duo combined deep expertise to form a strong and experienced team.

Nifty Gateway was acquired by "Bitcoin Billionaire" twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss of the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange in 2019, the exchange's first acquisition. Coincidentally, the founders of Nifty Gateway are also a pair of twin brothers - Duncan and Griffin Cock Foster.

MakersPlace's main founders, Dannie Chu and Yash Nelapati, were formerly engineers at Pinterest. Another co-founder, Ryoma Ito, has held key product/marketing-related positions at several start-ups.

Rarible's co-founders are Alexei Falin and Alexander Salnikov. Alexander Salinkov has a technical background of more than 7 years and has also been involved in some famous encryption projects, including Humaniq.

SuperRare was founded in 2017 by John Crain (CEO), Charles Crain (CTO) and Johnathan Perkins (CPO). They are also the founders of Pixura, a platform for creating, tracking and exchanging encrypted digital collectibles.

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7. Credit card

Opensea's platform transactions are conducted through smart contracts, which means that users' NFTs will never be under the care of any central authority. It also means that parties to a transaction can trust that the transaction will proceed as agreed, without the need for a middleman. NFTs can be stored in software wallets such as Enjin Wallet, Coinbase Wallet, Opera Touch, or even browser chrome plugins such as MetaMask.

Likewise, Rarible transactions still require MetaMask registration.

In order for MakersPlace to purchase digital works on the blockchain, users need digital wallets and cryptocurrencies for storing and purchasing works respectively. However, most people in the world do not have digital wallets and ether, making it difficult for creators to sell their creations to fans and collectors. To solve this problem, MakersPlace partnered with Stripe to support global credit card payments for digital works.

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8. Partners

The main partners of OpenSea are Quantstamp, BlockStack, Blockchain Capital, Trust Wallet, Combinator, Coinbase, Founders Fund and 1C. OpenSea has worked with game developers to create customizable online stores for users to automatically buy and sell their crypto collections.

MakersPlace has many partners, and the cooperation is very popular. One of the hot partners is Decentraland. MakersPlace has added all of its works to Decentraland's market section. With the theme of authentic and unique digital works, digital signatures and verifications are carried out through blockchain. Interested readers, please visit the MakersPlace VR Gallery!

Rarible has received numerous investments and many collaborative projects. Rarible has cooperated with the DeFi project Yearn Finance to issue insurance in the form of tokens. Yearn Finance's yInsure will allow users to purchase tokenized insurance for various DeFi activities through the Rarible market.

In 2019, SuperRare partnered with DADA.art for an event at London's Tate Modern, creating artwork for the first time in a world-class museum and then immediately making it available to collectors around the world. Like MakersPlace, SuperRare has also partnered with Decentraland and attracted a lot of attention.

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9. Conclusion

This article is from NFT Labs (ID: nftlabs), if you need to reprint and exchange, please contact Sophia (ID: lovebit98)

This article is from NFT Labs (ID: nftlabs), if you need to reprint and exchange, please contact Sophia (ID: lovebit98)