Magic Eden, a nonfungible token (NFT) platform built on the Solana blockchain, achieved impressive success in March. According to CoinGecko’s Q1 report, Magic Eden surpassed the popular platform Blur in terms of trading volume. The report revealed that Magic Eden experienced a staggering 194% increase, reaching a trading volume of $765 million.
CoinGecko also mentioned that Blur had a relatively successful month, with a trading volume of around $530 million. This success was attributed, in part, to Magic Eden’s Diamond reward program and its extended partnership with Yuga Labs.
Magic Eden’s achievement in March marked the sixth consecutive month of increased trading volume for the platform. Prior to this, Blur had been dominating the NFT marketplace in terms of trading volume for several months. The last time another platform outperformed Blur was in December, when the OKX NFT marketplace experienced a surge due to the rise of Bitcoin Ordinals. Before that, Blur had held the highest trading volume for ten consecutive months.
One of the factors contributing to OKX’s decline in trading volume was its loss of a significant share of Bitcoin trading volume to Magic Eden and another marketplace since December. Despite this decline, OKX still managed to secure the third spot in terms of trading volume, with Tensor and OpenSea rounding out the top five. Overall, the top 10 NFT marketplaces recorded a cumulative trading volume of $4.7 billion in Q1, representing a 51% increase compared to the previous quarter.
Interestingly, despite the surge in trading volume, the prices of major NFTs experienced significant drops. Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and CryptoPunks, two popular projects, saw price decreases of 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.
Recently, OpenSea made an announcement that it had discontinued its royalty enforcement tool. The CEO, Devin Finzer, explained that the tool was ineffective as competitors were evading it by utilizing the Seaport protocol to bypass its blacklist and avoid creator royalties. However, the company has since reversed its stance and expressed support for the ERC-712C programmable earning standard.