NFT marketplaces are changing to withstand the bear market
Through 2022, the bear market has affected the blockchain industry in ways many would never have expected. From entire crypto exchanges imploding, to free-to-mint projects dominating the charts, and some of the biggest NFT brands defying the odds and getting bigger, all things NFT have changed radically in the past year.
But while overt market swaps like Reddit’s overnight NFT empire and Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter have caused noticeable ripples through Web3, there are less noticeable developments happening at the forefront of the NFT ecosystem. As entities like Gamestop, Reddit, and now Instagram continue to enter the NFT market race in full force, established platforms like Rarible, SuperRare, and the like have been innovating behind the scenes, changing bit by bit.
The state of NFT marketplaces
NFT marketplaces aren’t what they used to be, but it’s not for lack of trying that even the most prominent marketplaces have lost. If we consider that the total sales volume on OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace, is down almost 90 percent in December 2022 as opposed to December 2021, it is clear to see that the entire NFT market is in decline.
Perhaps this is why many marketplaces have slowly increased. Whether in an effort to maintain market share or simply to help push the NFT space forward, many of the NFT space’s leading platforms have been changing. From adding new features to upgrading user interfaces, at first it may have seemed like each NFT marketplace update was an isolated event, but now it has become hard to dismiss the noticeable trend among market movements.
Potentially one of the most noticeable reconfigurations was Rarible. In the fall of 2022, the marketplace rolled out a feature-packed update called Rarible 2. The update saw the platform become an aggregated NFT marketplace (similar to OpenSea and LooksRare) and introduced the RARI Foundation, bringing Rarible another step toward full decentralization.
Not to be overshadowed by an opponent in any way, Rarible’s new iteration came as exclusive platform SuperRare also made waves by announcing something called RarePass – an offer that gives collectors the opportunity to purchase artwork from up to 24 extremely important crypto-artists through a single transaction. Even others, like OpenSea, have also entered their names in the ring, undergoing their own metamorphoses and emerging with robust new curation offerings, analytics and security features for users.
Still, while these more notable events are certainly indicative of the aforementioned trend, the debate surrounding royalties for NFT creators has also prompted platforms like Magic Eden to make significant changes to their infrastructure. Like zero/optional royalty marketplaces like Blur, X2Y2, and others are increasing, stagnation is undoubtedly wearing thin in the NFT space. But whether this current evolutionary fad and/or changing of the guard will be beneficial or detrimental to Web3 remains to be seen.
