Magic Eden, a nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace on the Solana blockchain, surpassed the industry leader Blur in terms of trading volume in March. Magic Eden’s monthly trading volume reached $756.5 million, a 194.4% increase, while Blur’s volume slightly rose to $530.4 million, as reported by CoinGecko.
Magic Eden’s rise was partly attributed to its new Diamond reward program and ongoing partnership with Yuga Labs. This partnership came as Yuga Labs ended relationships with NFT marketplaces not supporting creator royalties. March marked Magic Eden’s sixth consecutive month of increased trading volume.
This was the first time Blur had been surpassed as the top NFT marketplace by trading volume since OKX’s NFT marketplace capitalised on the Bitcoin Ordinals trend last December. Prior to this, Blur had led trading volumes for 10 consecutive months since overtaking OpenSea in February 2023.
OKX’s trading volume has declined 73.3% since December, falling to $180 million, as it lost a significant share of Bitcoin NFT trading volume to Magic Eden and UniSat. Nonetheless, OKX secured the third-highest NFT trading volume in Q1 2024, with Solana-based Tensor and OpenSea completing the top five.
Overall, the top 10 NFT marketplaces experienced a trading volume of $4.7 billion in Q1 2024, a 51.6% increase from Q4 2023. Despite this growth, the floor prices of leading NFT collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks have dropped significantly since their peaks in May 2022 and October 2021, respectively.
The enforcement of creator royalties has been a contentious issue between NFT marketplaces and studios. OpenSea, previously the leading NFT marketplace, discontinued its on-chain royalty enforcement tool last August, citing lack of success. It also faced competition from Blur, Dew, and LooksRare, which used the Seaport Protocol to bypass OpenSea’s blacklist and avoid creator fees.
However, OpenSea partially reversed its stance earlier this month by supporting the ERC-721C programmable earnings standard.