What Is NFT Market Place, And How Does It Work?

I feel like going back to when I was 7 and retrieve all the books I used as drawing pads. Then find a way to convert them to NFTs.

Just on the news about a month ago, a 12-year-old boy is set to earn six figures from the NFTs he created.

In simple terms, NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) are unique assets in the digital world that can be bought and sold like any other piece of property, but doesn’t have any tangible form of their own.

You can read about it here.

This same NFTs are now being traded for huge amounts more than we can think of.

Here’s another example of the facial expression of a little girl going for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

With this buzz, artists, sports persons, celebrities, creators and investors are getting into the game of NFTs as soon as possible.

This has generated the need to have a place where people can buy and sell NFTs.

Yes, you heard it right – buy and se NFTs.

One beautiful reality about NFTs is that the original creator of the NFT will continue to earn each time that NFT is sold to someone else. Thanks to the Blockchain system that’s making this happen because the record of the token is embedded in the system.

You can also learn about how NFTs are created here.

What Are NFT Marketplaces?

When you go to a physical market, you can use a physical money, like dollars to buy two pairs of Nike.

What if you go online, on Amazon? You can do the same by inputting your card details and then cash is transfered and good delivered to you.

In the NFT marketplace, you use cryptocurrency to buy and sell NFTs. You can also create NFTs, hence the NFT marketplace is an online service for the creation and trading of NFTs.

Now, instead of naming Amazon, Alibaba, eBay, Walmart, here are some of the best NFT marketplaces existing so far.

Note: this list is increasing by day.

1. OpenSea

Currently, it’s taken as the largest marketplace for trading NFT art to sports, sharp corner cards, virtual reality, collectibles…

It boosts about 200 categories and 4 million goods on the site. And for the currency base, the ether is rider.

Meaning that every transaction done in the platform is done with ether, from Ethereum.

The marketplace which was launched in 2018 is located at NewYork City, trades mostly on Digital art, music, games, domain names, virtual worlds, sports, collectibles.

According to the DappRadar, Opensea is this…

… no wonder many marketplaces like Decentraland runs on it.

2. NiftyGateway

Founded by Duncan and Griffin Cock Foster, at NewYork City trading on Digital art in 2018. And was acquired by the Winklevoss twins in November, 2019.

NFTs by Artists LIKE LOGIK, Grimes and Beeple have been sold on NiftyGateway with CROSSROAD selling at more than $6 million, with a more than $200 million sales in April, 2021.

Their trading process uses open editions, limited-edition publications made accessible for a while and at a price tag.So if the duration ends, you can’t get any NFTs to buy.

3. Rarible

Rarible is a marketplace that links digital artists and creators as sellers to sell their digital artworks, memes and even parcels of virtual land… books, photographs, movies, music albums,web addresses to buyers at a few.

It was founded by Alex Salnikov and Alexei Falin, in 2020, and based in Moscow.

Notably, Rarible is the first NFT platform in the blockchain space with a governance token. The most active creators and collectors of NFTs are rewarded with the right to vote on any important updates that’s been introduced to the platform. This makes it more community driven.

4. Foundation

Foundation possesses a culture they believe in that’s wrapped around their mission:

to triangulate the relationship between artists, collectors, and the myriad of marketplaces to create a strong community that benefits all. We highlight art, artists, the marketplace and trends on a daily basis providing the latest news and insights around blockchain, cryptoart, and other related news and topics.

Foundation Marketplace

It has some unique features like for an artist to join the platform, another artist who’s already part of the platform must send an invite (which is one per artist) to the intending artist… The new artist coming in must create an NFT or acquire one before creating a profile.

What a way to go! In that way, it’ll inspire more activities and less redundancy.

It’s located at Washington, D.C. and created in 2020

5. SuperRare

SuperRare is digital art market on Ethereum. On the platform, you can “collect and trade unique, single-edition digital artworks. Each artwork is authentically created by an artist in the network, and tokenized as a crypto-collectible digital item that you can own and trade. You can think of SuperRare like Instagram meets Christies” says the website.

As of today, 12th October, 2021, $90m have been earned by artists on the platform.

It started in 2017 by Jonathan Perkins and John Crain in London, England.

6. AtomicMarket

With over 58m NFTs created, it’s a smart contract where other marketplaces can buy and sell NFTs.

It’s important to note that it is not connected to the famous Atomic Waller created by Konstantin Gladych, the CEO & Co-Founder of Changelly.

AtomicMarket is a distributed liquidity NFT marketplace which means that everything which is listed on one market also shows on all other markets.

Located at England and was launched in 2021

7. Async Art

Founded by Conlan Rios at San Fransisco in 2020 and called Asynchronous Art, Async Art marketplace is another marketplace that runs on the Ethereum network.

In this platform, there is a unique feature that defines it.

“Each element of the artwork is called a layer and can be altered in many ways (rotation, scale, XY position, visibility, opacity, hue and RGB values) by its owner,” says an artist, owner of “cryptoforce” who’s been working in the platform, “and the result is displayed on the Master artwork, which is the final sum of all individual layer choices.”

So one can purchase both Masters and Layers. Layers are single components that make up a Master image, while a Master is a unique piece of art.

And then the artist controls the powers of each layer’s. Don’t also forget that irrespective of the possessor of the Master image, a Layer will reflect all changes made to it.

It’s worthy to note that the artist controls the extent of an artist’s work, and collectors have full control over every component of an art in this platform.

8. Mintable

The Singapore-based platform, founded by Zach Burks, where NFTs are minted and traded has caught the attention of Mark Cuban in recent times.

Mintable uses the Ethereum blockchain network to function.

It offers a “gas-free” minting feature… so you and I can create NFTs on Ethereum with no transaction fees.

Why is this a game changers for the minting process?

This is not done on “a Layer 2 blockchain or a side chain, and is not minted at a later date. It works by using blockchain signatures to create the NFT until it is first moved,” says Burk.

9. MakersPlace

Founded by Daniel Chu, Daniel Chu, Ryoma Ito, Yash Nelapati.

MakersPlace is a marketplace for digital creations like other NFT marketplaces.

On the platform, artists, photographers, writers… create and sell their work online through using the blockchain technology.

You can read more about it here.

10. KnownOrigin

easier for collectors to list, set a price and sell artworks from their collection. After an intense couple of weeks, we have released our new marketplace, with improved UX, a dedicated page and a new smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain.

Here’s a breakdown of their sales division:

On the first or primary sale of a KnownOrigin artwork, 85% goes to the Artist, 15% goes to the commission fee.

For a secondary sale (and all sales made after the first sale) 85% goes to the Seller, 12.5% goes to the Artist and finally, 2.5% goes to the commission fee.

KnownOrigin

It was launched in 2018 at the United Kingdom by David Moore, Andy Gray and James Morgan.

11. Axie Infinity

Here comes a place for all game lovers. Axie is currently known to be the most common Ethereum game.

In Axie Infinity, players can nurture, fight, and gather Axies (animated creature). This is done in farms and kingdoms. And sure, just like every other game, the more Axies you have, the stronger your territory.

So how does this make money for people?

Axies are bought and sold with the most expensive sold for 300 ETH.

Thanks to Vietnam as the home of launch in 2020.

How does it work?

Signing up

The process differs depending on the platform you’re in. However, the back step in signing up is creating an account or connecting a supported digital wallet, or doing both.

Once done, you can now…

Buy an NFT

Buying NFTs is either from a fixed price or auctioning. You can choose any process you want or the process that’s listed for that particular NFT.

Another action you can take is to…

Sell an NFT

Selling NFTs is meant for creators and those who want to sell a portion of an NFT.

If you’re a creator, you’ll need to follow the process of creating a NFTs until your artwork is minted in the marketplace. Then you can either place a price for it or decide to use auctioning to sell it.

So, once the buyer accepts the bid or agrees to pay the price stated for the NFT, the transaction is initiated. Transfer is done and deal closed but recorded in the blockchain.

Thanks to Valuables for making it possible to sell tweets as NFTs. Jack Dorsey sold his first ever tweet for whooping $2.9 million.

And so what?

Would you want to invest in NFTs? Are you thinking of the best platform to invest in?

Now, if that’s your case, then you have to carry out deeper research before you place your bid on any platform.

This revolution is still in the nursery stage. Lots of trials and adjustments and developments will be coming on from time to time.

Continuos research and learning will be the ultimate strategy for winning here.