The Bankless Guide to Magic Eden
Magic Eden is a leading NFT marketplace characterized by its support for multiple major blockchains. As of today, those chains are Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana, Base, and Polygon.
Key takeaways
- Originating as a hub for Solana NFT trading in 2021, Magic Eden has since evolved into a multichain platform, now offering support for all of the “Big Five” NFT chains.
- With +8,000 collections and +22 million monthly visitors, the platform currently boasts better revenue, trading volume, and active user stats than most other NFT marketplace.
- Magic Eden has also expanded beyond just NFTs through its native Magic Eden Wallet release and support for Bitcoin assets like Runes and Rare Sats.
What is Magic Eden?
Magic Eden is now among the most popular NFT marketplaces, rivaling the likes of OpenSea and Blur with its more expansive multichain offerings.
For example, the platform has become a major hub for Bitcoin Ordinals trading and a new center of activity for Base NFTs, while having facilitated more than $6 billion worth of SOL trading volume on its V2 Solana infrastructure to date.
Its popularity isn't tied to one chain, then, but rather to serving as a streamlined HQ for interacting with NFTs on all the most popular networks. Similarly, it has a range of products that make for a one-of-a-kind platform. These pillars include:
- 🛒 The Marketplace: This is the main platform where all the NFT buying and selling occurs. You can search for specific collections on specific chains, browse the top projects, hunt for big movers, and so forth.
- 🚀 The Launchpad: This is Magic Eden's drops platform, where it partners with creators to release unique limited-edition or open-edition NFTs. In exchange for the exposure and accessible secondary trading, the marketplace takes a small cut of the primary sales revenue.
- 🟠 Bitcoin Tools: This is not one resource but rather a bundle of Bitcoin-centric features on Magic Eden, like the Runes Marketplace, the Rare Sats hub, the Ordinals Inscriptions creator, and more.
- 👛 Magic Eden Wallet: The bespoke wallet of the platform, it separates itself from other competitors in offering a unified, one-stop app for managing your Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Solana NFT portfolios.
- 🎁 Magic Eden Rewards: This is the marketplace’s new tiered rewards program, a loyalty initiative for collectors that includes fee discounts and future rewards like NFT loot drops. Users earn “Reward Points” based on their activity like the volume of SOL transacted.
How to use Magic Eden?
Have some crypto ready and to trade some NFTs? Then, you can head to magiceden.io and connect your wallet of choice.
For Solana and Bitcoin assets, Magic Eden Wallet and Phantom are popular options. The Bitcoin wallets Leather (Hiro), UniSat, and Xverse are also supported, and on the Ethereum, Polygon, and Base side of things you can't go wrong with MetaMask or Coinbase Wallet.
Once you’re signed in, you can browse through the frontpage using various filters, search for specific collections, or click on the “Discover” or “Mint” tabs for additional possibilities like surfing curated categories, e.g., Rare Sats, or creating your own NFTs.
How to invest in Magic Eden?
In August 2024, Magic Eden announced its official ecosystem token, $ME.
Rebranded from Non-Fungible DAO and $NFT, the ME Foundation and $ME will serve as central pillars of the Magic Eden ecosystem going forward.
The foundation, a non-profit entity, will oversee the governance of $ME and the development of open-source protocols that Magic Eden and potentially other platforms will adopt. As for $ME , it has been designed to incentivize users to engage with Magic Eden products across a growing stable of supported blockchains.
The tokenomics and release date haven’t been announced yet, but $ME will eventually be claimable through the Magic Eden Wallet and will serve as the primary way to invest in the Magic Eden ecosystem going forward.
How to learn more?
Want to follow the progress and happenings of Magic Eden closer going forward? Here are a handful of helpful resources to keep in mind: