Alternative NFT Marketplaces (for artists)
I minted NFTs on two new marketplaces [and attempted a third] and I’m here to compare, contrast, and criticize each experience so you don’t have to go through the hassle. These are lesser known marketplaces that we didn’t hit in our first post about platforms.
Two of the marketplaces below store files through IPFS which is described well on this Foundation blog post. All allow you to upload images and video. However, fee structures, currencies, and communities differ pretty drastically. I’d love to hear everyone’s opinions in the comments since I know everyone has different experiences.
Proof of Art — NFT Showroom.
Currency: Hive
Website: https://nftshowroom.com/
Description: NFT Showroom is a digital art marketplace built on Hive, a fast and free blockchain that makes creating and collecting rare digital art simple and accessible
Minting fee: The first edition costs 5 SWAP.HIVE and each additional edition costs 1 SWAP.HIVE (1 $hive ~ .70 USD)
Quality of art: Excellent artists on featured pages, a lot of not-so-great work when digging deep.
Selling options: Fixed price for each edition of each piece.
For someone who is experienced, but not an expert, with buying/swapping/managing my crypto wallets, I hated the experience of Hive and the associated wallet needed for this site. First, you have to sign up for hive keychain, the wallet required for making an account on this marketplace. I used Blocktrades to swap ETH to Hive and transfer it to my new keychain address. Buying hive is easy enough if you’re used to using third party swap sites, but if it’s your first time braving the world of cryptocurrencies, this might feel damn near impossible. Because of my region of residency, I could not simply buy hive, I needed to swap it. The wallet does not allow you to send money to anyone who does not have a NFT Showroom account and associated keychain wallet, so if you were planning on sending $hive to your Formatic, Metamask, or another wallet you use with the more popular marketplaces, you’ll be in for a not-so-pleasant surprise. Just remember, hive is a completely different ecosystem and currency than ETH which is what most marketplaces run on.
Getting approved as an artist is relatively easy. Create a profile and attach your hive keychain wallet. Then ask to be whitelisted. The staff will send you a message through social media and once you respond, they’ll manually approve you. It took me about 24 hours, which was relatively painless but seems completely non-scaleable if/when they get more users since it requires a single individual to approve you (maybe this is why Rarible gave up on awarding badges until they recently revamped their verification process?).
*UPDATE* this process may have changed, I saw an “apply” button somewhere
Minting is simple. Once you click on the “tokenize” page and fill out the form, you’ll be able to successfully mint a piece for less than $4. Then, you’ll have to individually select each edition and price them for sale by clicking on the shopping cart icon at the top of the page which sounds annoying, but is actually very quick and easy.
All the annoyances of hive aside, the artist community surrounding this site is unbelievable. I posted a description of NFT Showroom on another buyer-related post and it was retweeted, shared, and liked by a ton of artists in the community. A few weeks later, decided to test out different ways for artists to support each other’s work (results coming soon!) and I had an outpouring of interested parties who replied and then actually followed through (vs. sites like Rarible or Opensea where everyone is just struggling to be heard). I’ve also made a handful of sales on super-cheap NFTs that are only possible because of the no-gas nature of hive.
Because this is still a smaller site, the quality of work is still on the newer/younger/less experienced side. However, that also means that more artists are interested in building actual relationships and learning from each other. Pieces seem to sell quickly compared to the other sites, but prices are largely below $100. Lastly, you can use the hive blog, PeakD, to earn additional hive by getting likes on your posts.
Bottom line: Hive isn’t the most user-friendly thing in the world, but you can’t beat the community on NFT Showroom. Strongly recommended for new artists or artists who are just getting into NFTs due to the easy sales and low fees.
Mintable
Currency: ETH
Website: https://mintable.app
Description: This is just a plain old NFT marketplace selling everything from screenplay rights to art. On the ETH blockchain.
Minting fee: None until purchased
Quality of art: Realistic. It’s a great representation of real artists with many different levels of talent and corresponding price points.
Selling options: Fixed, Auction, Auction with Buy Now
If you’ve ever minted on Opensea (which is probably the easiest platform to mint on) you’ll recognize that ease of use in Mintable. There’s no approval process, just hook up your wallet and click “mint an item”. You fill out the form, upload your file, and mint. That’s it!
One thing to keep in mind is that according to the Mintable website, not all data is stored with IPFS. This is a bit confusing because their help site seems to be outdated where it explains that only single batch items are saved with IPFS. Multi-batch items are saved on Mintable. However, this feature to choose how to store your image doesn’t seem to exist anywhere that I could find, so I can’t confirm where your image itself is stored. If it’s stored only on Mintable servers, you risk losing it and the token won’t point to any valid image (it’ll just be a token on it’s own). If anyone knows the answer to this question and how their images are stored now, please let me know in the comments so I can correct this!
This is pretty much as standard of a NFT marketplace as you can get. It feels like it was designed by a developer, so it’s to the point, fills your needs, and that’s it. Mint things, buy things, sell things. The metadata is featured more prominently as well as the information about the art itself (what type of file does it come with, etc.), but other than that, it’s just a functional marketplace.
What’s the downside? For me, the site loads incredibly slow. I’m not sure if this is a location issue since or if it’s a code issue, but I have to wait almost a full minute for images to load on the marketplace. I’ve also noticed that the volume and $ amount of sales seem to be much lower than other marketplaces. I minted a piece that only got 3 views although I would say that it was solidly at the top end of the mediocre art category on the site. As a comparison, I looked at a lot of higher quality art and I found that extremely few items had active bids on them. If you’re looking for a quick sale, this might not be the platform for you. But if you’re doing a physical art show and looking for a way to quickly tie NFTs to your physical pieces, this would be a very easy option to get started with.
*Update: I wanted to delete the item I tried to mint for a test so I could sell it elsewhere since it never got views or bids, but I don’t see a “delete” or “burn” button and can’t seem to figure out if it’s still visible. Please be aware that burning or deleting items is kind of confusing. Again, this seems like a platform made by a developer — not enough info or help icons where needed.
Foundation
Currency: ETH
Website: https://foundation.app
Description: Foundation is an invite-only marketplace that’s billed as a “creative playground” for artists, curators, and collectors to experience the new creative economy.
Minting fee: ETH gas fees
Other fees: You give Foundation 15% when you sell your art (even the first time)
Quality of art: Generally high quality, with a few duds mixed in
Selling options: Auction
This isn’t really an “alternative” marketplace anymore, but it’s one of the newer ones and wasn’t included in our previous articles. I haven’t personally minted on this site because unlike NFT Showroom, the artist community surrounding Foundation is less welcoming.
The only way to get onto the platform as an artist is through another artist’s invite. Unless you have a personal connection, that means shilling your work on the Foundation discord where dozens of other artists will then message you and attempt to extort large sums of money from you in exchange for a coveted invite. A few artists I previously found on other platforms and wanted to add to my collection reached out to try to get me to pay 100s or 1,000s of dollars for an invite which, honestly, turned me off of their work for future purchases (take this as a warning if you’re trying to sell your own invites!). I don’t hold it against them though, most of the NFT art money is concentrated at the top of the food chain and the little guys are just looking for a way to make a [virtual] buck.
Once you are on the platform, the reserve prices are mostly set above $1,000, and a ton of artwork sells at higher prices than what I see on Rarible or Opensea. That being said, I’ve had more artists popping up in my Twitter with unsold work lately.
Just like the money grabbing involved in the invitation process, it feels that a decent amount of the work on this site is just in it for the $$$. Pieces that would normally sell for much less based on quality or creativity are posted at extremely high prices, and based on conversations I’ve seen in my groups and artist communities, creators seem to expect even unreasonable reserves to be met. That being said, the overall quality of work here is generally high.
Bottom line: If you’re an artist who creates great work and has already sold pieces in the $1,000s of dollars, this seems to be a good place to get buyers at your level. Especially since SuperRare and some of the other platforms are even more difficult to get accepted to. If you’re just starting out and haven’t found a good price point yet, you might find that your pieces sit untouched as investors flock to the proven artists on this site.
What other marketplaces are out there?
For now, that’s three of the new ones. I’ve applied for SignArt app and Kalamint. As soon as I get a chance to use them, I’ll create another post!
I’ve also attempted to use Bakery Swap’s SuperMarket and used the “mint” button to mint a piece that then appeared to be lost in the bowels of the internet. This SuperMarket would use the currency BAKE (no gas) if you could get it to work. As it stands, I’m not sure the status of this marketplace, but if anyone has more information, let us know!
And lastly, here’s a reminder to everyone looking for a network with a smaller carbon footprint: check out our last post on Clean NFTs which includes a spreadsheet of all the markets currently up and running :)
