Attention all crypto enthusiasts! Have you come across Magic Eden? It is the most well-known NFT marketplace currently on Solana. On top of that, Solana is one blockchain that is a true rival to the highly popular Ethereum.
It allows users to sell NFTs or non-fungible tokens, unique crypto tokens that typically bear a sort of pointer to a piece of music or digital art, or even a collection in games.
On 2 August 2022, the company also announced that it is opting to go multichain, expanding its basic offerings to Ethereum non-fungible tokens. But its main and basic ecosystem blockchain will continue to be Solana.
Then, on 14 October 2022, Magic Eden made a controversial move for a royalty model that is optional. At the time, it also mentioned that market conditions technically forced the move, which “was effectively a race to the bottom.”
At the same time, they also made an announcement about how they were going to waive their platform fee of 2%. And instead devote funds to the development of tools for royalty enforcement.
Using Magic Eden: How To Go About It?
If you want to use Magic Eden, then you will require a wallet that is compatible with Solana, like Exodus or Trust Wallet filled with any SOL, enough that you can pay for your non-fungible token, along with the transaction fees on Solana’s blockchain.
You have to click on the ‘connect wallet’ option located on the site’s top-right corner. In this case, you don’t need to actually create an account. Once you tap on the ‘connect wallet’ option, you have to hit on any collection. Now you can start bidding on a particular project.
It is actually an interface meant for Solana non-fungible tokens. As a result, the platform can host any Solana non-fungible token project.
| Did You Know? The biggest NFT collection in terms of floor price and trading volume is Okay Bears, a collection of profile pictures of just bears. Similar to the market’s leader, OpenSea, Magic Enden allows users to look through multiple collections in terms of their different attributes. For example, in this particular case, Magic Sea allows users to basically sort through eyewear, fur, and the hats of the bear. |
More On Using Magic Eden:
In a world of non-fungible tokens, rare attributes, or even those with a sort of community cachet, typically sell for relatively more SOL. This is true as compared to the ones that have common attributes.
Moreover, Magic Eden also has an iOS app. But it supports only browsing – you will have to navigate to the site with a web browser, and for trading NFTs, you will have to connect to your web3 wallet.
This marketplace also has magic tickets for sale. These offer access to DAO (decentralized autonomous organization). Simply put, it’s a sort of Discord chat that allows users to vote on exactly how a marketplace operates.
Magic Eden also has a crazy launchpad. It is a part of the platform that allows projects to mint non-fungible tokens on Magic Eden. The advantage of the projects is to get featured on the marketplace site. It’s a lot like an artist selling his works at an auction, such as Christie’s!
In fact, the marketplace claims that only 3% of the projects that have applied to their launchpad actually make it via the application’s whole process.
Lastly, Magic Eden has this unique white-label marketplace, which Raydium uses, for example. Raydium happens to be a DEX (decentralized exchange) based on Solana.
About Magic Eden:
In September 2021, a group of four friends started Magic Eden:
- Sidney Zhang, CTO (Chief Technology Officer) and the former developer of Uber Eats,
- Jack Lu, CEO (Chief Executive Officer) and former employee at FTX,
- Zhuoxun Yin, COO (Chief Operating Officer) and former product manager of Coinbase, and
- Zhuojie Zhou, CE (Chief Engineer) and former developer of Facebook.
In July 2022, Magic Eden was able to raise 130 million dollars in a solid Series B funding round. This was led by Greylock and Electric Capital, with sufficient backing from Sequoia Capital and Paradigm. The Series B round that followed a Series A round earlier in March brought the new marketplace to a valuation of 1.6 billion dollars.
Then, in August 2022, Phantom Wallet, a popular wallet situated on Solana, was compromised. Phantom blamed another wallet provider called Slope, which was compromised earlier. And it ended up draining nearly 6 million dollars in funds from nearly 8K wallets, as per Elliptic.
Magic Eden, however, wasn’t affected.
Magic Eden Versus OpenSea:
On Solana, the trading volume of Magic Eden trounces OpenSea, the actual industry leader of NFT trading, which increased support for Solana during April 2022.
As per SeaLaunch’s Dune Analytics dashboard, Magic Eden is able to capture between 97% and 99% of the total volume every day for Solana non-fungible tokens. FYI, SeaLaunch is known for deriving data and information from the trading fees of the two platforms.
In spite of that, OpenSea continues to be the bigger platform. And that, too, in terms of regular sales on all blockchains. TBH, while Magic Eden is able to record around 2.1 million dollars a day or 55,000 SOL/day on average, OpenSea captures 15 million dollars in Ethereum daily.
Between these two marketplaces, the major difference is the network dominance. Solana’s Ethereum’s rival. As a result, OpenSea and Magic Eden have developed their dominance on two playing fields that are very different.
The main difference between Solana and Ethereum is that the former is cheaper and faster as compared to the latter.
SOL, the network’s token, used to be a favorite with both major players and venture capitalists. This includes Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX and the once popular but now bankrupt Three Arrows Fund (a crypto VC fund).
In 2022, when the crypto industry crashed, SOL, which was at a solid $258 during November 2021, fell straight to 26 dollars during the middle of June the next year.
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