Generalist NFT Marketplaces vs Curated Venues
Duncan Cock Foster, co-founder of Nifty Gateway, on NFTs as luxury goods
This split says NFT marketplaces are not one market, they are bundles of very different buyer behaviors. OpenSea works best when many kinds of NFTs are trading at once, because its edge is breadth, liquidity, and one storefront for everything. Curated venues like Nifty Gateway and Art Blocks win differently. They narrow supply, shape presentation, and sell status, taste, and provenance, which looks much more like a gallery business than an exchange business.
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On OpenSea, the product is browsing and trading across many chains and categories. That model rises with broad speculative activity. OpenSea added support across 22 blockchains and later pushed into more general onchain trading, which fits an index style marketplace serving whatever NFT category has volume at the moment.
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Art Blocks built the opposite experience. Artists upload an algorithm, collectors mint the work at purchase, and the platform curates who gets access to its audience. That curation matters because high volume open platforms create noise, while a narrower venue can help a small set of artists stand out and command higher prices.
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The market already punished the generalist exchange thesis. Coinbase sunset its standalone NFT marketplace in July 2024, and Kraken put its NFT marketplace into withdrawal only mode in November 2024 before fully shutting it down by February 27, 2025. Generalist scale turned out to be much harder when NFT demand narrowed.
Going forward, the category is separating into two businesses. Broad marketplaces are becoming all purpose onchain trading apps, while specialized NFT venues are becoming digital luxury retailers and galleries. If NFT demand keeps concentrating in art, collectibles, and status goods, the profit pool should keep moving toward the curated platforms that control selection, presentation, and brand.