Magic Eden surpassed Blur as the leading NFT marketplace in March

Solana-based nonfungible token (NFT) platform Magic Eden enjoyed huge success in March. According to CoinGecko’s Q1 report, the NFT platform registered its biggest trading volume in March, leapfrogging high-flying firm Blur. In the report, CoinGecko highlighted that Magic Eden experienced a jump of about 194% to hit $765 million in trading volume.

Magic Eden achieves a remarkable feat

In the report, CoinGecko noted that Blur experienced slight success last month, registering a trading volume of about $530 million. The report also stated that the success was partly a result of the platform’s Diamond reward program and its extended partnership with Yuga Labs.

The duo fostered their partnership around the period when the platform announced that it was cutting ties with NFT platforms without creator royalties.

The feat in March makes it six consecutive months that the platform has been up in terms of trading volume. The report highlighted that Blur had been the undisputed king of the NFT marketplace trading volume in the last few months before March. The last time a marketplace outperformed Blur was in December when the OKX NFT marketplace saw a surge fueled by Bitcoin Ordinals’ rise. Before that, Blur had posted the highest trading volume for 10 months in a row.

Creator royalties program and its controversies

OKX experienced a decline of about 73% in its trading volume due to losing a huge share of its Bitcoin trading volume to Magic Eden and another marketplace since December. Despite its market volume tanking, OKX came in third place in trading volume with Tensor and Opensea completing the top 5. Furthermore, the top 10 NFT marketplaces registered a cumulative trading volume of $4.7 billion, representing a 51% surge in Q1 compared to the last quarter.

Despite the rise in trading volume, the price of major NFTs has tanked significantly. High-flying projects Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and CryptoPunks saw a drop of 91% and 64% in their prices, respectively. Notably, both NFTs last hit their peak price in May 2022 and October 2021. NFT marketplaces and studios have been at loggerheads over the enforcement of creator royalties.

OpenSea recently announced that it had dropped its royalty enforcement tool. According to its CEO, Devin Finzer claimed that the tool didn’t experience any success as its rivals were evading it by using the Seaport protocol to avoid its blacklist thereby removing creator royalties. However, the company recently took a step back from this position when it announced its support for ERC-712C programmable earning standard.