Magic Eden… THE platform that has been the subject of much discussion. And for good reason, it is stepping on the toes of the liner Opensea. In this article, we explain why this marketplace is so renowned in the Solana ecosystem and everything you need to know about it.
Presentation of the Magic Eden marketplace
The history of Magic Eden
Magic Eden is an NFT marketplace launched on Solana in September 2021. When it was launched, it had to face competitors (Solanart, Solsea, …) and therefore had to differentiate itself to stand out.
The founders of the platform were not at their first try in the field of technology. Magic Eden was indeed founded and pushed by former Uber, Google, or Coinbase employees. The platform therefore had significant funds and a good network, just what it takes to ensure a successful launch.
One of the main investors, Shaun Maguire from Sequoia Capital, says that Magic Eden can outperform OpenSea. We can indeed agree with him when we see how quickly the platform has taken market share from its competitor!
Let’s also remember that the platform was launched at the right time and took advantage of the NFT bull run, where collections made significant gains in a few months. Blockchain Solana had also exploded in parallel, with a big growth in just a few months.
THE #1 platform on Solana
Magic Eden has chosen the Solana Blockchain to develop its marketplace. This choice is explained by the scalability claimed by Solana: ~ 65 000 transactions per second against less than 30 for Ethereum (Blockchain on which Opensea is developed)
And today, the figures speak for themselves, Magic Eden is by far the number 1 platform on Solana. It has appropriated 90% of Solana sales volumes on the secondary market.
Magic Eden adds Ethereum to its marketplace
Magic Eden was certainly built on Solana, but it is not limited to this Blockchain. It has integrated Vitalik Buterin’s blockchain, Ethereum.
This choice is of course motivated by the fact that Ethereum is n°1 in the field of NFT. This allows Magic Eden to diversify and to go and find new customers. But, it will also be possible to buy with a bank card, a good way to allow a greater democratization of NFT. These new features should be available by the end of 2022.
Ezu is the first Ethereum collection available on Magic Eden.
Many features to compete with Opensea
Many features
Magic Eden has positioned itself on the NFT market by offering many features on its platform. A launchpad (a kind of kickstarter of the web3) allows users to create NFTs and to have a great visibility. However, the platform is selective on the proposed projects, and selects only 3% of them.
This selection at the entrance allows to keep only the serious projects and not to harm the investors. Magic Eden applies 0% registration fees and 2% transaction fees, which is in the low average of other platforms.
Also, the platform has an “Upcoming Drops” section that allows you to find interesting upcoming drops at a glance. No need to spend hours searching, Magic Eden takes care of everything. Isn’t life great?
The search is also made easier by the attribute filter that allows you to refine your search in NFT collections by attributes.
Mint Authority allows artists to mine their work very easily. Just upload their work and it’s done in a few clicks. A DAO is even available.
Opensea in competition
As a reminder, Opensea is a platform built on the Ethereum Blockchain. Volumes exploded during the 2021 Bitcoin and Ethereum bull run.
In January, the platform reached its all-time peak with monthly volumes at almost $5 billion. But, after this rise… It was the fall (or rather the drowning). In February and March, volumes plunged into the abyss and never recovered (95%). It must be said that the crash of the Luna did not help…
But… Opensea did not innovate and rested on its assets. No novelty or almost for months, we wonder why the platform did not innovate, while it had largely the means. Meanwhile, Magic Eden was working in the shadow and preparing exclusive features that worked as soon as the platform was launched. That’s why Opensea has been releasing a lot of new features lately, trying to catch up, but it seems to be too late already.
The question of royalties
One of the features offered by Magic Eden is the 0 royalties. During the bear market, this feature was particularly interesting for collectors.
Let’s take a concrete example to understand. Let’s say you bought an NFT for $10,000 at the peak of the NFT bull run for 2.5 ETH. A few months later, your NFT is only worth 1.5 ETH. Add to that the fact that the ETH has lost 75% of its value… I’ll let you do the math on what you have left on your NFT. But let’s say you still want to sell your NFT. That’s fine. Except that on Opensea… you have to pay royalties for the authors.
So we understand why platforms that offered 0 royalties during the market period have taken market share on Opensea. This question of 0 royalties is obviously controversial, because it implies that the creators of the collections are paid less.
Magic Edens Games
We all experienced the Play to Earn wave during the bull run of 2020-2021. Many games appeared, like Axie Inifinity, … Facebook’s name change to Meta definitely played a role.
Well, you should know that many Play to Earn games were built on the Solana Blockchain. Why? Simply because transaction fees are much cheaper on this Blockchain than on others like Ethereum (this poses centralization problems, but that’s another debate).
Let’s mention Stepn, Genopets, or even Star Atlas and Aurory (which will launch soon).
The Magic Eden platform has of course not let this great opportunity to gain even more market share pass. Thus, the platform has launched “Eden Games” which includes most of the P2E games on the Solana Blockchain. Many other games are available: CaveWorld, Cyber Tribe, Bitmon World.
It is quite possible that Solana (and Magic Eden as a consequence) is the reference Blockchain for gamers. Magic Eden does not want to miss the GameFi revolution.
The best NFT collections on Magic Eden
DeGods
This collection was launched by a certain Franck, very active on Twitter, who defines himself as a “social experimenter”. It is a collection of 10,000 NFTs, launched in October 2021. The collection has seen a price spike thanks to the hype of its author, but also thanks to an ingenious ploy!
This scheme is a PHBT (Paper Hand Bitch Tax) of 33.3%. Concretely, it consists in penalizing NFT sellers with a 33.3% tax if they sell below the price of the floor, the mint or if they sell outside an “official” DeGods marketplace. With the revenue from the tax, the income generated goes into a treasury that is used to buy back DeGods from the floor.
This collection is considered by some to be a “Blue Chip” of the Solana ecosystem. One thing is for sure, this collection has not finished making news.
yOOts
We find our famous Franck with this new NFT collection! But, this time, it is a collaboration between him and Scum, one of the best artists of the moment. What is the novelty of this collection?
y00ts wants to give artists the opportunity to create and submit their own custom version of already existing features (attributes) and put them on sale. The max supply is slightly higher, with 15 000 NFT. This new collection is already trusted by Frank, the founder of DeGods. It is therefore very likely that this collection is also here to stay.
Concretely, artists will propose attributes to the community. It will be possible to buy these attributes and to hold the intellectual property, as well as to receive a percentage of the associated royalties. The owners of the NFTs will also be able to exchange privileged information with the artists. To obtain such or such attribute, it is also to be able to exchange with other people who also have this trait. A DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) system has been set up for this purpose.
Okay Bears
This collection was released in April 2022 and it has generated a lot of buzz, making it one of the top 3 NFT collections on Magic Eden. What does this collection have more than the others?
You have to keep in mind that this collection is atypical in the sense that it has 12 people behind it, including 6 artists and designers. A whole environment has been designed around the collection, including a “park” that is accessible to NFT holders.
The holders can also benefit from discounts, live events, etc. The roadmap also revolves around the “park”. The objective is to build a friendly community around the project, as evidenced by the style of the design.
The collection broke records with 9,500 transactions in a few days and a floor price of 300 SOL (about $200,000). It must be said that the collection benefited from being present on the launchpad.
How to buy and sell NFT on the Magic Eden marketplace?
Efficiently explore the NFTs
There are hundreds of NFT collections on the Magic Eden marketplace.
It can be difficult to make a choice and choose the right collection to bet on to make a maximum profit. It is therefore necessary to use the right tools to make the right choices, at the right time to buy at the best price. However, the platform offers a very useful tool to have the general stats of the NFT collections.
Buy and sell your NFTs
To buy NFT on the marketplace, you will need a wallet. If you want to buy NFT in SOL, we recommend the Phantom Wallet, intuitive, it is easy to use. Once you have downloaded the wallet, you just need to have a certain amount of Solana in your wallet to buy NFT. To resell them, nothing could be simpler, it is done in a few clicks (an article on the subject will come soon).
Magic Eden is probably here to stay. The famous platform is probably going to turn more and more towards video games like the play to earn which are launched on the Solana Blockchain like Genopets, Stepn, Aurory or Star Atlas. A real garden of Eden for gamers!
Coming from a teaching background, I’ve become passionate about the world of Blockchain. I’m eager to learn more and share the fruit of my research through my articles.
