Don’t let NFTs intimidate you as they skyrocket in price. Remember, the most valuable NFTs are the ones that make revolutionary DeFi projects a reality. With that criteria in mind, let’s take a look at some solid choices worthy of bookmarking in the crowded NFT marketplace.

No Ceiling to the Price of NFTs?

NFTs — non-fungible tokens — may just be the most exciting and simultaneously bizarre phenomenon to happen this decade. Without even retaining copyrights/trademarks, many of these indivisible blockchain tokens have already been sold for unseemly amounts of money.

Who would have guessed a few years ago that a digital autograph, albeit an indestructible and uncounterfietable one, in art form could become equivalent in value to a luxurious mansion?

Thus far, the graphic designer and CGI artist that goes by the artistic moniker ‘Beeple’, has topped all the NFT charts in sales. Beeple — Mike Winkelmann — may be vulgar on social media but he sure knows how to leverage his following and artistic skills. After selling his collections worth 3,602.482 ETH (about $6.8 million now), he was listed with Christie’s auction house and sold his ‘EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS’ NFT for $69.3 million. This marked the first NFT ever to be sold at a prestigious, classic auction house.

Bored Apes are no monkey business. The collection is currently the most valuable NFT collection in combined value, at over 1.1 million ETH ($3.8 billion) and has recently attracted several celebrity buyers including pop queen Madonna and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The success of the apes has helped Yuga launch two popular spinoffs- Mutant Apes and the Bored Ape Kennel Club.

Yuga recently also introduced their own token, ApeCoin (APE), and has plans to develop a metaverse game incorporating their most popular projects.

In other examples from the top 10 NFT lists, CryptoPunks from Larva Labs have altogether sold for over $1 billion. Among the priciest ones is the bandana wearing CryptoPunk #5822, which sold for 8000 ETH ($27.5 million). 

Larva Labs recently sold the rights to CryptoPunks and Meebits to Yuga Labs. The deal made Yuga the most valuable NFT owner in existence, with the combined value of CryptoPunks and Yuga’s ape projects coming up to 2.3 million ETH ($7.9 billion).

Alternative NFT Marketplaces 

Interestingly, the most expensive NFTs were not sold through the most popular NFT marketplaces, which are Rarible and OpenSea. Their trading volumes are $61.62 million and $212.55 million, respectively.

Beeple’s collections were sold on the little-known Nifty Gateway, which makes sense given that the Winklevoss brothers Cameron and Tyler own Gemini, the parent company of Nifty Gateway. Other expensive NFTs mostly sold within their own ecosystems – CryptoPunks via Larva Labs, Land on Axie Infinity via Axie Marketplace, CryptoKitties via CryptoKitties, etc. But the mainstream has its appeal. Bored Apes are sold almost exclusively on OpenSea. 

This makes it clear that we need to find the NFT marketplaces in which NFT collections can be easily found and organized across the board. Indeed, marketplaces with a clear interface and design.

Here are the top 3 alternative marketplaces for NFT collectibles.

1. CryptoSlam

As aggregators go, CryptoSlam is the best one. You know how it is much easier to type a computer component in a website and get a list of all the shops that sell it? Well, CryptoSlam does the same for NFTs. At a glance, you can get an overview of the sales of each NFT by product, creator, volume, number of buyers and over different time periods. 

Likewise, if you are interested in a particular NFT series, you can select it from a product list. All the NFTs you’ve ever heard of are there.

CryptoSlam NFT aggregator is based on the WAX Blockchain. Short for Worldwide Asset eXchange (WAX), this blockchain is increasingly used as a specialized solution for everything involving the secure and convenient trading of NFTs.

2. SpaceSwap NFT STARS

Sleek, pleasant, unique and space-themed, SpaceSwap is a Uniswap fork that has a two-tokenomics system — farming MILK2 and deflating SHAKE. Somehow, the dev team successfully merged the space and planetary bodies theme with mouth-watering milky products and aesthetically, it just works!

SpaceSwap is also popular for pioneering Shadow Staking, a technology that makes it possible for DeFi investors to no longer need to stake their liquidity provider (LP) tokens. As far as NFTs go, SpaceSwap had immediate success with them back in February, before they exploded in popularity, selling more than 100 NFTs in no time!

Unlike many other creators, SpaceSwap uses NFT sales to further fund important DeFi innovations and to fulfill an ambitious roadmap. Their main aspiration is to become the go-to station for the entire DeFi ecosystem. To this end, NFT STARS is going to be SpaceSwap’s intuitive and gratifying take on the NFT marketplace.

Although still in development, as its name suggests, NFT STARS aims to be a premium, curated NFT marketplace with hand-picked creators. They will become the cream of the crop, with their own unique, extensive and customizable page. As you must have realized by now, the creator’s reputation is the critical factor when determining the value of a NFT, alongside the NFT’s memetic potential.

Therefore, NFT STARS will not only make it a space worthy of artists, it will also enable the artists to collaborate with each other on projects. Of course, the bulk of the sales proceeds will go to the creators, while users can expect to see the incorporation of gamification mechanics, which will make NFT participation all the more enjoyable.  

3. AtomicMarket

Like CryptoSlam, AtomicMarket is built on the promising WAX blockchain. Who said that you have to spend years learning programming languages to create smart contracts and blockchains? With WAX-powered AtomicMarket, it’s easy to create a NFT marketplace, thanks to its flexible API and NPM module (package manager for Node.js).

Yes, in case you are wondering, that means that even CryptoSlam is part of the AtomicMarket. They all share the liquidity pool and currently hold a trading volume of $43.2 million. Likewise, their native token is WAX instead of ETH, which you can easily exchange on SpaceSwap. So far, the Atomic Marketplace is the most popular of the six, at the time of going to press.

Navigating Through NFT Marketplaces

It has never been easier for digital artists to make a living without worrying about a huge chunk of their earnings being gobbled up by mediators. In the initial stages of this DeFi arena’s popularity, you can expect the most popular NFTs to be scattered all over the place.

With these three alternative NFT marketplaces bookmarked, you can rest assured that you will always find the top gems. While CryptoSlam and AtomicMarket serve as aggregators, newly emerging SpaceSwap will likely represent an evolution in NFT marketplaces, prioritizing NFT creators first and foremost.