The rapid rise to fame of NFTs has caused a frenzy that made many people want to jump on the bandwagon. However, making sense of the marketplaces can be daunting. In this article, we’ll look at Rarible vs Opensea, two of the most popular NFT marketplaces today. Let’s see what these are and where we should go to trade.
What is Rarible?
A blockchain-based marketplace, Rarible is a platform to buy, sell, and trade NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and other tokenized digital items. You can use it to get digital collectibles secured with blockchain technology. Rarible is an Ethereum-based platform that facilitates the sale, creation, and purchase of ownership rights to digital works of art using NFTs.
It is community-owned, which means that the community will lead, make decisions, and govern itself without outside intervention. Central to Rarible is its cryptocurrency, RARI. With it, you can moderate creators, vote on platform proposals, and curate featured artwork.
Rarible allows content creators such as digital artists, meme creators, or model makers to sell their wares. To convert their work into NFTs, these creators must first “mint” a token using the Rarible software. The platform is revolutionary as it represents a new kind of ownership for digital collectibles such as art, music, videos, and game items.
Rarible is based in Moscow, Russia, and was founded by Alex Salnikov and Alexei Falin in the early months of 2020. It places a particular focus on the arts and other related assets. This may be why Rarible is used primarily by artists wanting to turn their artworks into NFTs.
To use this marketplace, you need to get an Ethereum wallet such as Coinbase or MetaMask. Once you link your crypto wallet, you can start browsing Rarible for items you can purchase. Also, artists or content creators can use the platform to house their minted NFTs even if selling them isn’t an option yet.
This marketplace takes pride in providing a safe and secure environment. It is protected by blockchain technology, making it a secure place to create and trade NFTs. It is simple to use and requires no knowledge of coding.
Furthermore, Rarible lets its users earn royalties from the NFTs they buy and sell, making it a good potential for earning passive income. It offers a wide selection of tokens categorized as follows:
- Art
- Games
- Photography
- Music
- Videos
- Memes
- Domains
- Metaverses
- DeFi (decentralized finance)
Pros
- Beginner-friendly and straightforward transaction processes
- It addresses the limitations of the intellectual property market
- It uses a zero-barrier environment that allows direct engagement for its users without restrictions
- 100% trustworthy
- Opensea integration
- Accepts credit card, debit card, and Google Pay payments
Cons
- It doesn’t allow withdrawals and deposits without an ETH crypto wallet
- Wallet creation in the platform can be difficult
What is Opensea?
The world’s first and largest NFT marketplace, Opensea, is a decentralized platform to buy, sell, and trade NFTs. It is a peer-to-peer destination if you want to check out non-fungible tokens (NFTs) or crypto collectibles. If you’re looking to buy and sell blockchain-based digital assets such as music, art, videos, and gaming items, Opensea is a great place to go.
Opensea allows content creators to mint their artwork and turn them into NFTs that they can sell with a fixed price or offer for bidding. Most of its operations are on blockchain technology, making it safe and secure. It is decentralized, meaning you won’t need an intermediary to create and trade NFTs.
Think of Rarible and Opensea as the eBay, Amazon, or Etsy of the crypto world. Opensea was founded in 2017 by Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah and is headquartered in New York City. Its valuation is over $1 billion, with celebrities such as Kevin Durant and Ashton Kutcher investing in it.
Having started as a marketplace for the CryptoKitties, the digital cat collectibles, Opensea has become a Unicorn company. The platform holds a wide array of NFTs, collections, and projects, thanks to its being the first-ever NFT marketplace. It started with 4,000 active users in March 2020 and has ballooned to more than 600,000 this year.
Opensea is described as having a non-custodial platform, meaning no central party takes control of the transactions. It is also peer-to-peer, which translates to the platform having no intermediary between sellers and buyers. Just like Rarible, it earns by taking a cut out of every transaction.
One of its best features is that it allows content creators to mint their artwork for free using its Polygon-based gas-free marketplace. This means that creators won’t have to pay transaction fees on the Ethereum network. Much like Rarible, Opensea allows users to get royalties for each secondary-market sale of their token in perpetuity.
Pros
- Allows users semi-anonymity, which lets them use the platform without creating an account
- Supports more than 200 payments options such as ETH/WETH, USDC, DAI, SOL, etc.
- It has over 20 million user-owned assets and collectibles in over 200 digital asset categories
- It has a large and active community of users worldwide
- Industry-leading security
- Has an established team of developers
Cons
- Has fewer payment options
- Requires users to connect a crypto wallet before using
Rarible vs Opensea: Which is a Better Platform?
At first glance, you will think that the Rarible vs Opensea battle is a close one. It may be, but there are many differences if you look closely. While Opensea has a decentralized system, Rarible does not. This matters as it gives a better flipping yield for collectors and provides them with a more extensive scope to make significant returns from their investments.
As for payments, Rarible has an advantage over Opensea, especially for newbies. The former accepts modes of payments other than cryptocurrencies. However, Opensea has a mobile app but no messaging feature, which is quite the opposite of Rarible.
Final Thoughts
While both Rarible and Opensea are great places to trade NFTs, they also have their ups and downs. It’s only a matter of preference, and hopefully, after reading this article, you’ll have a good grasp of your requirements and decide accordingly.
