What is Rarible?
Launched in early 2020, Rarible is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) that showcases over 100,000 digital items that can be bought and sold on their platform. This Moscow-based company was created around artists who create and mint NFTs (non-fungible tokens) to sell online.
The digital assets are sorted by category on the platform, allowing potential buyers to find the crypto art that appeals to them personally. Filters on the platform include art, music, metaverses, memes, punks, and NSFW. People can also search for GIFs and images that are within their price range or search for specific collections.
When uploading their first NFT to the platform, artists can choose whether or not they would like to implement a royalty on all future sales. This means that after their initial primary sale, they will receive a percentage on all future secondary sales. The artist is allowed to choose the royalty percentage of their crypto collectibles.
Rarible keeps track of the history of every item that is bought and sold on the platform. Not only is this information easy to read and understand by potential buyers, but Rarible also allows other startups to implement this open-source data on their own servers.
The platform has helped facilitate many sales of digital artwork as it has continually grown in popularity on the platform. Rarible has also released its own governance token (called RARI) that allow their users to have a say in future updates to the marketplace.
What is SuperRare?
SuperRare is an NFT platform designed to be similar to an art gallery. More in line with other great NFT marketplaces like KnownOrigin and Nifty Gateway other than those like OpenSea, SuperRare specializes in finding talented artists to create for their platform.
The company was founded by John Crain and Jonathan Perkins in early 2018. While it started small, it has continually grown over the years into a platform that now averages between $25-30 million in monthly sales volume. Approximately 1,000 new collectors sign up to the account on a monthly basis to purchase and trade one of the unique 15,000+ available digital items in their collection.
When selling their NFT art on SuperRare, creators pay the platform a 15% commission for all primary sales made on the Ethereum blockchain. The good news is that SuperRare tracks all future sales and ensures that the artist receives 10% royalties on each secondary sale of that asset, even if they aren’t personally involved in that particular transaction.
Rarible vs SuperRare: Audience
Rarible has a database of over 100,000 assets that is easy to sort through their filtering system. The founders wanted to create a platform that was artist-focused, allowing loyal users to receive their governance tokens after successful transactions. Those who hold these tokens will receive voting privileges in future changes to the platform.
Like Rarible, SuperRare was also built for artists, though they went a step further to create a platform with a gallery-style vibe. In fact, the platform compares itself with the well-known art gallery, Christie’s. The DeFi platform is very selective in choosing artists to work with, only adding a few to their trending platform on a monthly basis.
Rarible vs SuperRare: Supported Currencies
Both Rarible and SuperRare limit transactions to ether (ETH) to buy and sell on their marketplaces. Nether will allow you to purchase digital assets using fiat currency (USD, GBP, AUD, etc) or other cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.
Additionally, both platforms each have their own native currency. Rarible’s governance token is known as RARI and is mined through transactions on the platform. Unfortunately, some users have incorporated “wash trading” a practice where they create multiple accounts to buy and sell their own assets in order to get the currency. This has reflected poorly on its value. That being said, the platform is taking steps to correct the issue.
SuperRare also has RARE, a curative currency that was used to create the SuperRare DAO. Holders of these tokens are allowed to oversee certain aspects of the platform and make decisions about future changes. The platform originally airdropped 15% of the total potential amount of RARE tokens to their user base in July 2021. Additionally, tokens will be mined through transactions on the platform.
Rarible vs SuperRare: Supported Wallets
Rarible supports the following wallet integrations: MetaMaks, Coinbase Wallet, WalletConnect, MyEtherWallet, Torus, and Fortmatic.
On the other hand, SuperRare currently is limited to whom they work with, only integrating with MetaMask, Fortmatic, and Wallet Connect.
Rarible vs SuperRare: Other Differences
Some of the other ways Rarible and SuperRare differ are as follows:
- Platform Fees – As far as NFT marketplaces go, Rarible has low transaction fees at 2.5% to both the buyer and seller (OpenSea is the lowest with only 2.5% to the buyer). Meanwhile, SuperRare charges a 15% commission to the artist for all primary sales. They also charge a 2.5% transaction fee for all secondary sales.
- Royalties – Rarible digital artists are allowed to set a variable percentage for future royalties (most choose between 5-10%). Those who mint on SuperRare are automatically given a 10% royalty whenever their NFT is sold in secondary sales.
- Smart Contracts – Rarible works with both ERC-1155 and ERC-721 smart contracts on the Ethereum platform. SuperRare only allows ERC-721s to be minted. ERC-721s allow for data to be easily tracked (and are often valued higher), whereas ERC-1155s have much smaller gas fees for minting.
Rarible vs SuperRare: Conclusion
For the average NFT collector, Rarible is more attractive due to its larger database and lower transaction fees. That being said, some people don’t like how the governance token has been handled in the past and are a bit wary for that reason.
Both Rarible and SuperRare are safe to use as neither will ever take custody of your cryptocurrency or your digital assets. Instead, these marketplaces only provide a service allowing wallets to connect in order to buy and sell NFTs.
Luci is a novelist and active blogger. She loves learning new things and tackling new and interesting industries. Her inquisitive nature makes her the perfect writer and researcher.
While she’s relatively new to the NFT space (as most people are) she’s loved diving in and providing great resources for beginners and intermediate traders.