The comprehensive guide to alternative NFT Marketplaces
Don’t want to pay ETH gas fees? Want to find unknown artists to invest in before prices runaway? Just looking for something new?
These non-ETH NFT Marketplaces are a follow up list to my original post “A comprehensive list of NFT marketplaces, compared”. Since then, I’ve been educated on how to purchase clean(er) NFTs using PoS currencies (proof-of-stake, not “piece-of-****”… although, some of them are) which we also wrote about here if you’re interested. After trying out pretty much every fully functioning NFT platform, I’m comparing them below so you don’t have to go through the trouble.
Important: Grading below is done on a curve. In my personal opinion, none of the sites below are as consistently good as a few of the ETH marketplaces in terms of quality art even though you can find extremely high quality art on all of these. This makes sense since there are fewer artists using alt currencies, so there’s a smaller pool to draw from. Additionally, the ease-of-use section is assuming the reader has purchased alt currencies before. If you have not, knock off at least 2 points from every rating. You will need to set up different wallets and, in some cases, use different exchanges for each site below. Higher points given for sites that allow you to buy the currency directly through the website/wallet with a credit card.
VIV3
Currency: FLOW
Quality of Art: 10/10 (grading relative to other platforms on this list)
Ease of Use: 8/10
Main Takeaway: Collection based site with generally high quality work that consistently sells out.
VIV3 goes all in with the drop model. They release collections rather than individual works by artists. These collections always sell out. I’ve seen prices anywhere from $30 USD all the way up to $1,000s of USD. The only problem is that there’s no art to buy if everything has already sold.
A few of these collections feel a bit more like collectibles, but the fact that each line of images is a single collection makes it easy to skip over the ones you don’t like. Artists must be approved, along with samples of their work, so you only see creators who have already been vetted.
Because of the collection model, you know you’re purchasing from an artist who can turn out consistent work over and over again considering they are dropping 6+ cohesive pieces at a time. You don’t need to worry about accidentally purchasing from a one-and-done creator.
To buy, you’ll need to create an account and purchase FLOW which can easily be done through Kraken. On the Kraken website, click “buy crypto” and as long as you verify your account, you’ll be able to purchase FLOW directly if you don’t want to go through the hassle of converting. Then, send the FLOW to the address associated with your VIV3 account. Easy peasy!
Sign-Art
Currency: SIGN and WAVES
Quality of Art: 9/10
Ease of Use: 7.5/10
Main Takeaway: Verified artist numbers stay low, so quality stays relatively high. Worth trying if you’re looking for something new.
Sign-Art uses primarily WAVES for purchases, although SIGN can also be used. In practice, almost every piece is priced in WAVES. You can buy some of the higher end work on this site for less than $300 USD, but some prices edge closer to $1,000 USD at the very top.
Converting money to WAVES is easy if you are comfortable working within exchanges. Otherwise, this might seem a bit tedious. I created a wallet using Waves-Keeper, and converted from USDN, that I purchased and transferred from my main wallet. The conversion from USDN-WAVES can be done on Waves Exchange which seamlessly links to your wallet. One WAVES coin is currently a little over $12 USD. Things get a bit more complicated if you’re an artist considering minting is done in SIGN, but we’ll leave that alone for now.
The platform itself is artist-centric rather than art-centric. That means you can search by artists who you know the name of, but otherwise, you’re stuck scrolling through the entire collection of minted work on the site. Luckily, there are still very few collectibles littering the pages, and only 10 of each item can be minted so you don’t have pieces with 50+ editions if you like to buy on scarcity. The majority of the verified artists on this site appear to opt for 1–2 editions per piece.
Because there are very few artists who are approved (currently, only 185, proud to say I’m one of ‘em!), the quality tends to be higher than some of the other marketplaces. There are almost no kid’s drawings or photos of sketches. I’ve only seen 1 or 2 bald mannequins, and very little cryptoart. Overall, it bodes well for art collectors as the talent continues to grow.
NFT Showroom
Currency: HIVE
Quality of Art: 7.5/10
Ease of Use: 8/10
Main Takeaway: Community actively growing and art quality increasing every day.
This site is constantly doing updates and I wrote a whole feature on it here because it was the first alt marketplace I ever used. To keep things short, the art isn’t always the highest quality, but the artists are all extremely enthusiastic and the community is constantly expanding to include more experienced creators. Plus, they have more search options in their gallery than most of the other platforms listed here.
That being said, there are a few incredible gems in here that you can get for under $200 USD (very few pieces are in the price range of the one shown above). Because the artist community for this site is extremely international and there is no lengthy vetting process outside of identity verification, you see voices of people who don’t normally have a platform due to high gas fees or gatekeepers looking for a certain kind of art.
Additionally, the HIVE currency has recently been on a run, so any HIVE I was holding while waiting to make a purchase has increased in value.
To use this platform, you’ll need to sign up for Hive Keychain and then you can use BlockTrades to swap currency, which is easy if you have a mainstream wallet elsewhere.
Kalamint
Currency: TEZOS
Quality of Art: 8/10
Ease of Use: 8/10
Main Takeaway: Collection based site with generally high quality work that consistently sells out.
Kalamint is still a bit all over the place. Almost none of their pieces are under $50, unlike NFT Showroom that has a ton of work in the $5-$15 range. Very few of their pieces are as high quality as some of the work on VIV3 and worthy of $1,000+ price tags. Like the other platforms, there aren’t many search fields in the gallery. Plus, there’s still an artist approval process so you have some filtering out of brand-new and inexperienced artists if you’re trying to find those first-time creators. The site itself is neither here nor there yet.
The picture below is a pretty fair representation of the art on this site, in my opinion. Some things are interesting and some are even good, but there’s also a lot of anime, collectibles, and starter-renders.
However, if you prefer to use the currency TEZOS, this is the place to be. People who love it, love it.
Sign up through the website and then hook up Temple Wallet to purchase and use TEZOS.
I’d check back on this one in a few months once it finds it’s footing.
Paras
Currency: NEAR
Quality of Art: N/A because of size restrictions
Ease of Use: 8/10 (points removed because of slow loading times)
Main takeaway: Slow load time, primarily designed as collectibles that happen to have art on them, not art that happens to be collectible.
This site goes under the name ParasHQ on social media, and uses the web address paras.id, just for clarity. Paras is an art cards marketplace. I originally dismissed this platform because they don’t sell art NFTs in the traditional sense, but instead sell “art cards” that are an aspect ratio of 64:89 and can only be up to 16MB in size.
Using the currency NEAR should be on the easier side since you can purchase with a credit card, which is why this site has a relatively high ease-of-use rating. However, due to my regional restrictions, it was impossible for me to get any (I cannot purchase crypto with a credit card, because my credit card is tied to a state that is not accepted on most exchanges, and my IP address is in Thailand since I currently live here, at the end of the day, I don’t know what region it is that’s giving me the problem). I explained this to their social media team and they set me up with an account that had a few NEAR already in it so I could test out their site. I did, and I bought this drawing, which was easy to purchase by searching with a price sort lowest-highest.
I love the service, I love their enthusiastic community. I want so badly to write nice things here.
However, at the end of the day, these are small art cards that cannot be displayed on a digital frame like a Meural or Samsung’s The Frame if you want to display your art. The quality is hit or miss, but the small size and limited portions keep this on the lower end for displays. The art card model is cool, especially for people who like to collect things and have an eye for art, but not great for people who just want a digital version of art they would typically collect in physical form.
Hic et nunc
I’m not going to rate this site, because it doesn’t work for me for completely unknown reasons. That being said, I constantly come across artists and collectors promoting this platform as a place to purchase interesting work by independent artists. I would love to know what you all think!
The above is just my experience using the platforms listed. Feel free to let me know your opinions in the comments. Also, keep in mind that things rapidly evolve in the NFT space and what I write today might not be relevant tomorrow. Click the links and form your own opinions if you’re curious!
