Introducing and comparing OpenSea, SuperRare and Rarible of NFT platforms
What is an NFT?
NFTs prove ownership of a unique digital asset like art, music, collectibles, videos or anything else with blockchain technology.
NFTs are like a signature for digital items: They authenticate ownership of digital assets like art, collectibles, music, videos, in-game assets, and more. Just like physical certificates, they document. NFTs can contain any data the creator wants to include, but these are most relevant:
· Who created it
· When it was created
· Who bought it (and when)
· The price(s) it solds for
· Who owns it now
Blockchains that host NFTs include:
Flow, Tezos, Polygon, Ethereum
…and more.
Blockchains supported by different platforms:
There are platform to issue, collect, and trade rare digital art backed by non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the blockchain.
Key terms used in the NFT field:
Primary sales: the first time an artwork is sold, also known as a mint sale.
Secondary sales: which is any sale following the primary sale.
Gas fees: the fee required of any transaction done on Ethereum. Paid directly to Ethereum miners who validate these transaction and power the entire network, you can think of gas as a sort of toll fee for the Ethereum blockchain.
Introduction and comparison of OpenSea, SuperRare and Rarible platforms
(*OpenSea:
· If this is your first time listing for sale on OpenSea, the seller will have to pay the transaction miner fee twice to set up an account. This is a one-time fee and no subsequent payments are required.
· When buying a fixed-price item, the buyer pays a miner fee.
· When an offer is accepted, the seller pays the miner fee.
*Rarible:
If you enable “free minting”, the buyer of your NFT covers the fees. Free minting also adds your creation to the Rarible collection (collections are like folders for NFTs), not your own. To launch your own collection, you have to cover fees.)
OpenSea
OpenSea is currently the world’s largest comprehensive NFT trading platform, and its Ethereum NFT transaction volume accounts for about 98% of the market transaction volume.
According to Dune Analytics, as of September 6, 2021, OpenSea’s cumulative transaction volume has reached US$5.29 billion, and a total of US$348 million in handling fees have been earned through the platform.
The advantages of OpenSea are mainly concentrated in the following: one-stop trading platform, free gas fee minting NFT, decentralized storage, low threshold and clear fees.
1) Cross-chain, cross-project, cross-category one-stop trading platform
OpenSea is a cross-chain, cross-category, and cross-project NFT comprehensive trading platform. This comprehensiveness provides users with one-stop trading services, and also concentrates user traffic, bringing more exposure to products. OpenSea currently supports multiple blockchains such as Ethereum and Polygon. Users can complete transactions of assets on different chains on the platform without understanding the underlying technology. There is no limit to the scope of NFT projects and categories, whether it is virtual land, game skins, music, paintings, videos, etc., can be purchased on OpenSea.
2) Free gas minting
There is no gas fee to mint NFT on OpenSea. Only when the user successfully sells the product, the minted NFT will be listed on the chain and the gas fee will be charged. This “Free gas minting” model greatly reduces the user’s participation threshold, and only needs to pay gas fees when the transaction is completed, which also reduces the participation risk of newcomers.
3) decentralized storage
The data content of the NFT minted on OpensSea is stored in the decentralized storage network, which ensures the persistence and immutability of the data. What we see now is generally the way to mint NFT tokens by storing documents with hash values offline. As a decentralized storage protocol, IPFS itself has the ability to store large amounts of data in various situations, and to ensure that data cannot be tampered with.
4) Low threshold and clear fees
Compared with trading platforms that focus on the art NFT field, OpenSea has no user threshold and no issuance restrictions. Anyone can issue their own NFT. OpenSea only charges 2.5% of the transaction amount, and the charging model is clear. The author can set royalties on the NFT, and when the NFT is traded again, the author can collect the corresponding royalty income.
SuperRare
Launch of SuperRare Spaces, SuperRare DAO, Sovereign Smart Contracts and $RARE.
· SuperRare Spaces
SuperRare spaces are community-moderated galleries for curators, collectors, and community members to follow and post work through SuperRare.
Each space is overseen by a designated operator (or operators), voted for by RARE holders. The elected operators will select artists, market them as they see fit, and receive a commission on all sales through their space.
The SuperRare DAO also earns commissions from the sale of spaces, with incentives distributed directly to token holders via the blockchain, ensuring that curators can curate all spaces added to the network with high quality. $RARE holders will be invited to vote on which spaces should go live in the next cycle. This will be called the “Space Race”.
· SuperRare DAO
In order to achieve gradual decentralization, SuperRare has started to transfer all platform commissions and fees to the newly established SuperRare DAO. In the future, the DAO treasury will be viewable at superraredao.eth.
This community vault containing ETH and $RARE will be overseen by $RARE token holders and managed by the community.
The SuperRare DAO is a community treasury address: 0x860a80d33e85e97888f1f0c75c6e5bbd60b48da9.
· Sovereign Smart Contracts
SuperRare is expanding into a multi-contract platform that enables artists to create custom, personalized NFT minting contracts known as Sovereign Smart Contracts.
Artists can now choose to continue casting artwork under a shared SuperRare contract, or under their own branding.
· $RARE
Artists or collectors on the SuperRare platform can claim the RARE token drop.
The number of tokens airdropped by SuperRare is 150 million, accounting for 15% of the total.
Official token contract address: 0xba5BDe662c17e2aDFF1075610382B9B691296350
· Only invited artists can create artwork on the SuperRare platform.
Rarible:
As of January 31, 2022:
· RARI Token: A Special Aspect of the Rarible NFT Market
There are not many NFT exchanges that provide artists and investors with benefits such as decision-making and voting rights. However, the Rarible platform is further developed through the RARI token. These Rarible Governance Tokens (RGTs) help build strong Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs).
Additionally, the total supply of RARI tokens is 25 million, with an active circulating supply of over 4.68 million. All holders of the RARI crypto token are rewarded for participating in the governance of the platform.
· Lazy Minting
Items minted with the ‘lazy’ feature of OpenSea are non put ‘on-chain’ until they are purchased. Because of this, those NFTs will not be viewable on Rarible until then.
If you want those items viewable on Rarbile, you must pay the gas fees and the mint the works. That way, they are accessible on the blockchain and can be viewed on Rarible– this applies to lazy minting done on any platform. The respective platform holds the data associated with your NFT ‘off-chain.’
· NFT storage
NFTs on OpenSea and Rarible are mainly stored on IPFS.
