Discover 11 NFT Marketplaces using IPFS
This article will show which (of the most famous) NFT marketplaces are using the IPFS.
It is written for brands, creators, geeks, technical and non-technical people who already have an NFT collection and want to know where they can list it for sale.
A bit of Context
I recently embarked on a new adventure in Web3. While building Flume, I got to learn a lot of new stuff, and I got to have tons of unsolved questions.
One of the challenges I had was “well, once I have my NFTs, how can I automatically list them on the major marketplaces without doing it manually?”.
Just to give you a bit of context, Flume automates the creation and deployment of NFTs collection without writing code. In a few steps, the user gets a smart contract deployed with up to 10k NFTs. Yes but then? Should the users load manually all those NFTs into the marketplaces???
Normally, the first reply I give myself is “there must be something already existing that solves this problem”, and in most cases, I am right lol.
To solve this problem, I found the IPFS.
What is IPFS?
IPFS is a distributed system for storing and accessing files, websites, applications, and data.
Basically, when you search for content on the internet, instead of querying someone else’s computer/server, you access their mirror stored on the IPFS. Imagine an open-source version of Google Drive.
Now let’s apply this concept to NFTs.
Let’s say you store the content of your NFT on IPFS, meaning you are mirroring your content there.
On the other side, any marketplace using IPFS can access your content through the protocol.
Got it? Your content is immediately available on all those marketplaces/services using IPFS — You DO NOT have to manually load and sync your content across them — Cool, right?
That being said, let’s discover which are those marketplaces using IPFS, so if you happen to have your NFTs stored there (via Flume, for example 😆), you’ll know where to trade them easily.
The List
One note for you. Keep in mind that the following marketplaces are centralized services. Creators can often use their minting tool to create and sell but the NFTs they’ll be creating there are NOT theirs until NFTs are minted (written in the blockchain) — prior to that, the marketplace is the real owner.
All marketplaces heavily rely on IPFS for listing/selling/trading everything that has not been created directly on their platform.
So if you’re working on an NFT project on your own, make sure to involve IPFS, so you can easily get listed across them with the minimum effort.
#1 Opensea
Opensea is the biggest and most famous NFT centralized marketplace.
It offers a wide range of non-fungible tokens, like art, domain names, trading cards, and collectibles. You can buy and sell almost any NFT out there, including the most famous ones as well. It provides many ways of selling your assets, like for a fixed price, with a declining price, or with an auction.
You can check their documentation here for more info.
One last note, they recently released Seaport protocol, an open source marketplace fully decentralized.
#2 Rarible
Rarible is probably the second biggest NFT marketplace at the moment.
As its direct competitor, it offers a wide range of non-fungible tokens like art, photography, games, metaverses, music, domains, memes, and more.
Its focus is on art assets tough.
Users can buy, sell, or create NFTs on the platform.
Even though it is tokenized (and shares the tokens with its users) Rarible is a centralized marketplace. It will be nice in the future how the governance will be impacted by the tokenization, maybe (hopefully?) they’ll transition to a decentralized service through a DAO.
You can check their documentation here for more info.
#3 Nifty Gateway
Nifty Gateway is a popular NFT marketplace due to its collaboration with popular creators and brands.
The platform is managed by Gemini, a centralized crypto exchange.
Users can of course buy, sell, and create NFTs on the platform, having the possibility to get royalties from secondary sales. The con of this service is that they host the NFTs without relying on other services, so any security breach can represent a serious problem for anyone.
Find their documentation here.
#4 Async.
Async Art is an art movement built on NFTs.
It’s a platform where you can create, collect, and sell non-fungible tokens (also working with music formats).
It is one of the few services allowing the creation of programmable artworks.
Here is the link to their documentation.
#5 SuperRare
SuperRare is a niche marketplace to collect and trade unique, single-edition digital artworks. They work with a small number of artists who produce the artworks that will be turned then into NFTs.
The service works only on Ethereum Network and they recently launched their token to converge into a DAO. Like Rarible, it seems they are shifting to a more decentralized approach.
SuperRare also launched a social network to enhance transparency and gamification of the NFTs they produced.
More info is in the documentation hub.
#6 Zora
Zora is an open platform that allows creators, collectors, and artists to buy and sell a wide range of NFTs, like art, music, and media. Other than trading NFTs, it allows users to create and share their work.
Zora strives for “Collective Creation,” where the platform and its users can work together to produce a more transparent, accessible, and ownable infrastructure. Their manifesto is clearly a hymn to decentralization.
Documentation is available here.
#7 Institut
Institut is an NFT marketplace that focuses on digital art. Its core mission is “to empower artists and broaden the contemporary art audience by harnessing the power of new technologies”.
Institut focuses on quality over quantity, with an invitation-only program that seeks to empower digital art and connect “traditional” and “digital” art communities.
Institut is also a platform where artists can mint their artworks. As stated on their website, “For additional security, the original digital file is securely stored using IPFS”.
Find here the FAQ page with a lot of info.
#8 Enjin
Enjin Marketplace is a platform where users can explore and trade blockchain assets.
It relies on the Enjin Coin to be spent on digital assets and on the Enjin Wallet to easily list and purchase gaming items and collectibles.
Enjin services work on the Ethereum network and focus on the gaming industry through gaming items trades or gamified rewards programs.
They involve IPFS both in their minting tool and in their marketplace listings.
Here is the link to their documentation.
#9 KnowOrigin
KnowOrigin is an NFT marketplace strictly focused on digital art.
Creators can use it to showcase their unique artworks and sell them to collectors.
The service relies on IPFS for their operations.
One thing to be highlighted thought, there might be some problems with secondary royalties payments if you previously used a different marketplace like Opensea.
You can dig into their documentation to find out more.
#10 Foundation
Foundation is an NFT marketplace that focuses on digital art.
It provides artists with a minting tool and guarantees them a % of royalties on secondary sales.
Their service relies on IPFS so that once artworks are minted, they will always exist, independent of Foundation’s own infrastructure.
They recently decided to make their mission wider by releasing their OS (Operating System).
As written in their blog, they are “opening up our tools for developers to build on top of Foundation Protocol. All of the components, API endpoints, and smart contracts that power foundation.app will be available to you. Build your own gallery, record label, curated NFT marketplace, internet-native museum, multiplayer game, headless brand, or a web3 destination yet to be imagined”.
Documentation can be found here.
#11 Magic Eden
Magic Eden is an NFT marketplace specifically focused on the Solana blockchain.
It claims to be a “web3-first marketplace” due to its DAO and NFT membership activities.
Media define Magic Eden as the rising competitor of Opensea considering the rumors of the opening to the Ethereum network.
Magic Eden, of course, allows its users to buy and sell NFTs, and also supports Solana game creators through its “Eden Games” portal.
ME offers creators an NFT Launchpad as well, just like Opensea and many others. But be careful with this as centralization should be THE web3 enemy.
The service relies on IPFS for sharing and accessing content.
Here is the documentation.
I hope you had fun doing this, for any questions/doubts just leave a comment or reach out to me at tusamarco1995@gmail.com, and feel free to join the Flume discord server to find a community of creators like you!
