Magic Eden, a nonfungible token (NFT) platform built on Solana, achieved remarkable success in March. According to CoinGecko’s Q1 report, the platform surpassed the trading volume of the popular firm Blur, reaching a staggering $765 million, marking a significant jump of approximately 194%.
CoinGecko also highlighted that Blur had a decent performance last month, with a trading volume of around $530 million. The report attributed Magic Eden’s success to its Diamond reward program and its extended partnership with Yuga Labs.
The partnership between Magic Eden and Yuga Labs was solidified around the time when Magic Eden announced its decision to sever ties with NFT platforms that didn’t provide creator royalties.
March marked the sixth consecutive month of increased trading volume for Magic Eden. Prior to March, Blur had been reigning as the dominant player in the NFT marketplace trading volume for several months. The last time a marketplace outperformed Blur was in December, when the OKX NFT marketplace experienced a surge due to the rise of Bitcoin Ordinals. Before that, Blur had consistently held the highest trading volume for ten consecutive months.
OKX witnessed a significant decline of approximately 73% in its trading volume, losing a substantial portion of its Bitcoin trading volume to Magic Eden and another marketplace since December. Despite this decline, OKX secured the third position in trading volume, with Tensor and Opensea completing the top five. Overall, the top 10 NFT marketplaces recorded a combined trading volume of $4.7 billion, representing a 51% increase in Q1 compared to the previous quarter.
Despite the surge in trading volume, major NFTs experienced significant price drops. Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and CryptoPunks, two prominent projects, saw their prices plummet by 91% and 64% respectively. It is worth noting that both NFTs reached their peak prices in May 2022 and October 2021. The enforcement of creator royalties has been a contentious issue among NFT marketplaces and studios.
OpenSea recently made headlines by announcing that it had discontinued its royalty enforcement tool. According to CEO Devin Finzer, the tool had not been successful as rival platforms evaded it by utilizing the Seaport protocol to bypass the blacklist and remove creator royalties. However, the company has since reversed its stance and expressed support for the ERC-712C programmable earning standard.
