OpenSea vs Rarible

The world is overwhelmed with astonishing talents in all fields of life ranging from technology, management, life, music, arts, and lots more. The most beautiful aspect of life has always been art. Many see art as the perfect expression of emotions, feelings, memories, and life itself.

Now as the world becomes more digitized, we see the need to take these industries into the digital space and let the talents in them flourish in the digital space.

Out of the necessity of creating a digital space came blockchain and NFTs. NFTs are digital representations of real-world assets be it art, music, images, videos, etc. It is not only a digital representation of physical assets; it can also be used for digitally created assets. This takes us to the NFT Marketplaces that host these NFTs and among them are OpenSea and Rarible, which we will be talking about in the article.

Categories of NFT Marketplaces

Presently, the NFT marketplace is fragmented, with associated organizations possessing their distinctive message and style. This indicates that there is no centralized/monopolized location for all NFT assets trading. Every NFT marketplace is competing vigorously to be the next Amazon or eBay for NFTs.

Nevertheless, all NFTs marketplace still serves the same purpose. A place where artists can auction their unique art pieces and collectors can buy these art pieces based on their rarity and uniqueness.

The NFT market can be further categorized into three, namely:

• Open Market
• Closed Market
• Open protocol

Most popular NFT marketplaces like OpenSea, Rarible, and Mintable are categorized as Open Market. At the same time, the popular Nifty gateway is branded as a closed market type. Our focus in this article will be on Rarible and OpenSea NFT marketplace.

What Is the OpenSea NFT Marketplace?

The crypto space is getting more familiar with the NFT trend. NFT marketplace has become one of the most sought-after in the crypto space since it’s required to trade NFTs. OpenSea is a good example of one.

In 2018, the prominent OpenSea launched its NFT marketplace, an aggregator with a variety of NFTs to pick from. Based on its NFT specialized development, the OpenSea platform is relatively convenient for both artists and collectors to sell and buy unique digital assets, with each transaction secured using the ETH network.

For newbies, the OpenSea NFT marketplace can be described as a peer-to-peer market space hosting several kinds of digital assets.

No doubt, OpenSea is the most recommended NFT marketplace for investors looking to buy popular NFT collections like the Cryptopunks, Cryptokitties, and many more. Artists get to display and auction their digital assets globally without owning the assets. Furthermore, OpenSea charges each auctioned NFTs a 2.5% commission of the price.

OpenSea Now Worth $13.3bn

At the moment, OpenSea claims its net worth to be $13.3 billion after it secured a new investment worth $300m. Investment firm Paradigm is said to be at the forefront of the new round of funding, with Coatue Management following suit. This pushes the platform’s valuation to $13.3 billion four years after its launch.

According to the report provided, OpenSea previously raised more than $100 million from a host of investors. The investors included an Investment Firm “Andreessen Horowitz” and actor Ashton Kutcher.

OpenSea Apologies to Creators After Minting Blunder

OpenSea briefly flirted with controversy over its decision of limiting the number of NFTs and collections that its smart contract could create or mint. Before this announcement, the alleged marketplace provided users with unlimited collections and assets mint access.

The controversial decision was only going to allow 5 NFT collections with no more than 50 items per collection. However, NFT creators fought back the idea with some arguing that their unfinished collections would now forever be halted. OpenSea has now apologized and reverted this decision.

What Is the Rarible NFT Marketplace?

Rarible’s homepage

OpenSea’s counterpart Rarible is an online and software platform developed on the Ethereum blockchain to empower digital creators with a series of integrations and functions. Rarible provides NFT creators with a platform to sell or even mint crypto assets, representing the authenticity of their work.

Alex Salnikov and his partner Alexei Falin initiated the project in Moscow, in 2020. The existence of Rarible eliminates the need for an intermediary while easing the process of trading and distributing all kinds of digital assets. Rarible as an NFT marketplace is a space where digital art and content creators can trade their assets with crypto.

Rarible native token is called RARI, which empowers holders with the ability to vote on proposals with the respect to the number of RARI tokens held. At the same time, votes are both necessary and significant for change in the ecosystem.

The platform operates with a perfect blend of Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) marketplace and NFT technology. In addition, Rarible is the first digital platform to introduce governance tokens such as RARI into the NFT space. It also utilizes ERC-20, ERC-1155, and ERC-721 tokens for the creation and trading of NFTs.

The RARI Token

In most cryptocurrencies, limitations are to be expected and this does not exclude the Rarible platform itself. Rarible set a limit of 25 million RARI tokens and among its established rules, 60% of these tokens are reserved for Rarible users.

The reserved tokens are expected to be distributed to sellers and buyers in the first four years of operation. Every week, Rarible tokens are distributed to users that have performed a transaction on the Rarible market within the said week.

As said earlier, RARI is the governance token of the Rarible platform that enables most active creators and collectors on Rarible to vote on any platform upgrades, participate in curation and moderation.

Rarible Integrates With Tezos Blockchain

The Rarible NFT marketplace successfully integrated with Tezos, a proof-of-stake blockchain. With this collaboration, Rarible can feature Tezos NFTs on its platform while providing support for secondary sales of Live Tezos projects. Furthermore, users get to mint low-fee NFTs.

Tezos is officially the third layer one blockchain supported by the platform, with Ethereum and Flow, Dapper Lab’s blockchain powering the NBA Top Shot. According to a statement made by CEO Alexei Falin, Rarible aims to integrate with Solana and Polygon next in its mission of building a multi-chain platform to merge the NFT space.

OpenSea vs. Rarible NFT Platform

Even though Rarible and OpenSea NFT marketplaces are solely focused on the NFTs market, and operate on the same Ethereum blockchain, each platform has features that set them apart. We will look at both platform features to provide a better insight into each NFT marketplace.

The Blockchain Ecosystems

The blockchain ecosystems supported by the OpenSea NFT marketplace are Ethereum, Polygon, and Klatyn. This allows users access to three blockchains for the minting of NFTs. Users can select Polygon if they want to mint, sell or buy NFTs without gas fees. Additionally, users can utilize the Kaikas wallet to sell and buy Klaytn NFTs on the platform. For Ethereum minting, users will need to pay gas fees, which are determined by market forces.

For Rarible, the blockchain ecosystems supported include Tezos, Flow, and Ethereum. You can choose the Tezos blockchain for low gas NFT minting to avoid the high gas price on the Ethereum network. There is also upcoming support for Polygon and Solana.

UserBase

Just about anybody can create NFTs on OpenSea and list them for sale. That is evident in the number of users found on the OpenSea platform. According to Dune analytics, the platform has 1,165,763 active user wallets as of January 31, 2022.

On the other hand, Rarible focuses more on creators and deals. Nevertheless, the platform can still boast more users than OpenSea with 1.6M total users on the platform.

User Interface

In this area, you will have to give it to Rarible as the platform has a very appealing user interface that is easy to navigate compared to OpenSea. Even though the OpenSea interface is easy to navigate, it is still not as simplified as the Rarible interface.

NFT Variety

Here the focus of the Rarible NFT platform is very diverse from arts all the way down to Metaverse. On the other hand, the OpenSea NFT category is just as diverse, touching on almost all types of NFTs you can think of from arts to music. However, OpenSea does not cover as many categories as Rarible.

In-House Payment Options

On Rarible, you can buy NFTs using ETH, XTZ (Tezos), WETH, and FLOW tokens. The option here is diverse, which is a good thing for users seeking to trade NFTs on the platform.

There are also several payment options for users on OpenSea too that want to buy or sell NFTs. On OpenSea, the supported tokens for payment are WETH, ETH, USDC, and DAI.

Could Rarible Outshine Opensea?

That Rarible could outshine OpenSea is a possibility that should not be ruled out at all. OpenSea is still considered one of the largest NFT marketplace. However, Rarible is not very far behind. In fact, as of January 31, 2022, a newcomer LooksRare has taken the crown of the largest NFT marketplace from OpenSea. Not just that, on October 12, 2021, Rarible also achieved a similar feat.

In recent times, OpenSea has found itself in the wrong headlines and that could dent users’ confidence in the platform. For instance, a bug that was discovered in December 2021, allowed three attackers to buy NFTs at a much lower price and resell at a higher price. The vulnerability has since been patched.

Things like this could allow Rarible to fill the void that may open up on users’ confidence in OpenSea. For now, OpenSea is still head and shoulder above the Rarible platform.

Conclusion

The focus area of NFT traders could play a part in determining which NFT platform will be chosen for minting. Given the diverse range offered by both platforms, users can be assured of plenty of options when trading their NFTs. The coming of age of the metaverse could also be a determining factor on which of the two NFT platforms outshine each other in the long run.