Rarible Review 2024

		Rarible is an online NFT marketplace offering an extensive selection of digital tokens secured by crypto blockchain technology.
Rarible is an online NFT marketplace offering an extensive selection of digital tokens secured by crypto blockchain technology.

Rarible is a community-led marketplace that allows digital content creators to sell their work as NFTs. A non-fungible token is a type of digital crypto token, which can be traded and logged on a blockchain ledger. This gives the artist credibility and opportunities to receive recognition and royalties for their work. Rarible differs from many NFT trading alternatives as it aims to be a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO), run by and for the community. This review will investigate the platform, weighing up the pros on cons of trading NFTs with Rarible.

What Is An NFT?

NFTs are taking over the internet. They are digital assets that are minted and traded on an online marketplace. When content is tokenised on the blockchain, it is logged permanently, making the transaction immutable. Ethereum is the blockchain of choice as it is optimised for smart contracts. A Decentralised App (DApp) like Rarible can be built with no intervention from a third party and it supports the ERC-721 and ERC-1155 token standards.

There is a diverse range of digital tokens available for trading, from music and art to virtual land and other obscurities. Celebrities, sports franchises and more have been capitalising on the trend, shining a light on some of the issues in their respective industries. This is rapidly building a case that NFTs enable content creators to maintain the rights to their work and receive financial recognition.

On the contrary, arguments have been made that the NFT world ultimately follows similar trends as any other influencer-based platform, such as Spotify, Instagram and YouTube. This means established artists and celebrities end up receiving the most recognition and financial reward, whilst small artists struggle to gain a following.

Blockchain technology currently exhausts serious amounts of energy, and the environmental impact has thrust the Ethereum network into the firing line lately. It’s hard to provide an accurate reading, but recent statistics suggest that the Ethereum blockchain uses around 26.5 TWh of electricity a year.

To contextualise that figure, it almost equates to the annual energy consumption of the country of Ireland, which is home to over 5 million people. To handle the energy consumption, miners who manage the transaction are paid a ‘gas fee’, which means that if you wish to mint a token, the cost can be extortionate.

The NFT creator doesn’t necessarily see past the veil of a sleek website design or the ease of creating a token when they use a website such as Rarible. In reality, they are paying for an Ethereum miner to use significant amounts of fossil-fuel energy.

Rarible Explained

Based in Moscow, Rarible is an NFT marketplace, founded by Alex Salnikov and Alexei Falin at the start of 2020. The platform’s main focus is on digital art and collectables. The marketplace is non-custodial, meaning no authority has possession of your tokens at any point. Pioneering investors are a reassuring sign that the company is in safe hands.

History

Rarible secured $1.75m funding from blockchain investment firms. The latest round was in February 2021 and investors included CoinFund, 1kx, Coinbase Ventures and ParaFi Capital. The funding kickstarted realising their vision of creating a DAO.

Rarible currently operates as a governance system. Any owner of RARI governance tokens, Rarible’s cryptocurrency (founded in July 2020), can vote to implement changes within the company and moderate the marketplace.

There are a total of 25 million RARI, distributed via liquidity mining. 75,000 tokens are airdropped to marketplace participants every week. Existing users and documented NFT holders/buyers are eligible for a RARI coin airdrop. Unfortunately as with most things, scammers cottoned on and found a way to manipulate a well-intentioned system. Implementing a wash trading scheme, users started buying assets from themselves using fake accounts to receive RARI tokens. These could then be sold on an exchange such as UniSwap.

At the time of writing, RARI has a market cap of $106m and a fully diluted valuation of over $740m, according to CoinGecko. RARI token price is currently sitting at around $27. RARI demonstrates that the demand for the NFT market goes further than just the digital artworks and virtual games that are available.

The end goal is to have a fully autonomous governance model, allowing the Rarible community to shape the future of the company. This inspires trust in the company as they have to be transparent for the community, and it’s easy to influence and follow their development.

Another testament to their transparency and dedication to the community, the team recently pre-released open-source Rarible protocol for the NFT Hack Hackathon. There is a thorough docs page which details the protocol, including features such as lazy minting. This encourages the community to build on chain with the protocol and to be directly involved with the Rarible journey.

Rarible Tokens

The exchange offers a diverse array of tokens. There is a strong focus on digital art, which stems from the founder’s keen interest in the art world. Digital art, in particular, has been making headlines as NFTs from the likes of Beeple have been selling for an incredible $70m.

The leading categories include art, photography, games, metaverses, music, domains, DeFI, memes and an X-rated NSFW area.

You can explore hot collections, hot bids, top sellers and buyers over various time frames and more. Once you open an account, the creators and collections you follow will refine the content you’re shown. Below we’ve outlined some popular content available across Rarible categories.

Art

Digital artist by the name of Pest Supply entered the NFT marketplace, selling works for up to $900,000 at Rarible. According to the artist, the works explore “how value can be created from satire”. Speculators were questioning the similarities between the work to notorious street artist Banksy. The rumours were quickly dismissed by Banksy’s authentification body, Pest Control.

Rarible’s competitor, OpenSea blocked Pest Supply’s work over the blurred copyright lines. Among other artists listed on Rarible is Pak. Known for controversial and performative pieces, Pak has created a range of content that have sparked discussion over the value of art, including his recent burn.art project.

Other notable projects included his “The Title”, a commentary on NFTs being less about the art itself but owning a specific file. He sold the same piece at varying prices, only changing the title. Three of these title pieces were ‘The Gift’, one of which was given to Sotheby’s via Twitter, breaking crypto art into the illustrious landscape of the fine art world.

Note, it’s worth being wary of fraudulent activity, such as recent impersonators posing as American artist Kaws. Do your research.

Music

Bridging the gap between art, music and celebrity mania, Lindsay Lohan made the news recently after listing an image on Rarible. The image was airdropped to her by an account dubbed ‘Daft Punk’, and Lohan went on to list the item for sale for $15,000. She has since minted her own NFTs on Rarible, including her first token entitled ‘Lindsay “Lightning” Lohan’. She recently sold her electronic music comeback ‘Lullaby’ NFT on another site which went for $85,484.

Metaverses

Virtual land, from metaverses such as Sandbox and Decentraland are available on Rarible. These pockets of digital land increase in value as the virtual worlds fill up and can be populated with games, NFTs and more.

Games

Online trading card games such as Sorare and God’s unchained are for sale on Rarible. These collectable games have blown up over the past couple of years. With a handful of rare cards issued, cards are being sold for serious money. Other obscure collectables include virtual pets, such as the Alpaca series.

Fees & Charges

There is a lot of discussion regarding high minting costs at Rarible. The platform takes a commission of 2.5% on either end of an NFT sale. This means a total of 5% is taken from the final sale price. This service fee is competitive, but it means you pay a commission for listing, regardless of if the item sells. Other websites, such as Mintable and OpenSea offer gasless minting, taking a fee if the token sells.

As with all NFT platforms, there is a gas fee to establish a connection between Rarible, the blockchain and your wallet. This doesn’t go to Rarible and is a one-time transaction. A second fee is taken as an upload fee to list the NFT in question. Both of these fees are essentially a miner fee for computational expenses and work, paying the Ethereum processing fees.

The listing fee fluctuates in response to supply and demand so the cost of minting an item can vary greatly. It could be a good idea to view the current gas price and wait for a dip to avoid paying a high gas fee. You can see the current prices on websites such as Etherscan.

Rarible Payments

To use Rarible services, you will need to open a wallet that allows you to interact with the Ethereum blockchain. You can make transactions, connect to applications and store funds and NFTs in the wallet. There are several compatible wallets you can use with Rarible so have a look into which is the best for your needs. Among the integrated wallets are MetaMask, Fortmatic, WalletConnect, Coinbase Wallet, MyEtherWallet and Torus.

Ensure you have deposited enough ETH in your account to cover gas fees or your transaction might be rejected. Some wallets allow you to buy cryptocurrency directly from the wallet, by card, transfer or even Apple Pay. Alternatively, you can purchase ETH with any reliable decentralised exchange (DEX) and centralised exchange, although a centralised exchange has custody over your currency until you send it to your wallet.

Bonuses

There are currently no promotional offers at Rarible; however, as mentioned previously, RARI governance tokens are airdropped to active market participants and NFT holders. Airdrops like this encourage other NFT holders to utilise the Rarible space and allow users to participate in governance meetings and discussions. This keeps the platform moving in a community-led direction, evolving and responding to the needs of the users.

Opening A Rarible Account

To create a Rarible account, hit the connect a wallet button on the top right of the Rarible homepage. Connect your existing wallet or create a new wallet with one of the integrated providers. You will automatically create a new account when you log in with the wallet.

Once logged in, click on your account name in the top right. You have the option to edit your profile to complete the signup process, including your display name, a custom URL, your bio, Twitter handle, website, email and a display image. Upload your display image, logo png or gif and add a cover image to make your page sing.

Finally, click the ‘get verified’ button to help to keep the Rarible community safe and have your items listed in search results. The ease of creating an account is a strong point, but the lack of KYC guidelines leaves the platform open to impersonators and other fraudulent activity.

It can sometimes take a week or so for Rarible to approve a verification badge; however, it could take longer as they receive a high volume of requests. You might experience the NFT not showing up in search results, but whilst waiting to be verified you can still show people to your page with a direct link. If it’s taken over two weeks to get verified, you may have to update your profile as it could be that you either haven’t filled in enough information, or your account doesn’t have enough activity.

Creating & Selling NFTs

Minting NFTs at Rarible is simple, clear, and open to any individual. The platform makes it possible to create NFTs with no coding experience. There is a create button on the top right of the website which leads you to the options to either create a single item or a collection of multiple items.

Upload the file, appropriate metadata and royalties %. There is a file size limit of 30Mb and file types are PNG, GIF, WEBP, MP4 or MP3. The minting time of an item with Rarible is instantaneous, but you have the option to put your NFTs online for bidding immediately or at a later date. You can also choose to auction or to add an instant sale price.

There is also the option to add unlockable content, which could be anything from additional files, to a digital key to receive bonus goods. These would unlock once the NFT is purchased. Then upload your files, input the properties and click create to mint your token with Rarible.

There currently isn’t an option to edit the description and other NFT properties once created, so you would have to burn the token and remake it to make changes. Burning tokens also incurs a gas fee.

Rarible have integrated with OpenSea, so collectables minted can be put on auction, viewed and managed on the OpenSea platform and Rarible. This doesn’t, however, work the other way. There are also options to list your items on OpenSea in $RARI.

Rarible Customer Support

There are a host of ways to get in contact with Rarible. The platform’s Governance page via the website includes general discussion categories, areas on technical upgrades, DAO governance, site feedback, platform development and moderation. The team also host a weekly governance call, bringing public opinion to the forefront of their ideas.

Unlike other platforms, there is no official white paper or roadmap for Rarible’s future, but the team are quick to respond to governance feedback and current affairs. Additionally, the exchange hosts a Discord server, Telegram, Instagram and an active Twitter account. You can submit a support request via the Rarible website but check the aforementioned forums as many queries may have already been answered.

Benefits

• Strong community focus, reflected in the governance system
• Variety of community discussion platforms and resources
• Create NFTs with no coding experience
• Open-source protocol
• Easy to use

Drawbacks

• Scammers falsely receiving RARI
• Notable environmental impact
• External crypto wallet
• High minting costs

Rarible Verdict

Rarible is at the forefront of the NFT trading community. Whilst OpenSea is leading the charge, Rarible offers a unique service. Promising to become a community-driven marketplace, with open source software and governance tokens already implemented, the exchange has a foothold in a competitive market. In a short time, Rarible has proven to be an innovative platform and the terminal of choice for leading artists and celebrities.

Still, there are several issues that we believe need ironing out compared to other NFT trading alternatives. Firstly, high fees have been reported by countless users. Liquidity mining became a playground for scammers and quickly manipulated the price and demand of RARI. Issues with verification and impersonators are also proving to be a problem amongst the community.

Whilst Rarible responds well to new ideas and engages with the community, a detailed long-term plan isn’t evident and clarity on this front would be greatly beneficial.

FAQ

		Rarible is an online NFT marketplace offering an extensive selection of digital tokens secured by crypto blockchain technology.
Rarible is an online NFT marketplace offering an extensive selection of digital tokens secured by crypto blockchain technology.