OKX NFT Marketplace Review: A Booming Home for NFTs!

2022 was not a year that was kind to the crypto community. Rather, the forces that be have done their best to test the resiliency of the community by raining down one calamity after another. We now find ourselves deep in crypto winter, one of the coldest it's ever been. Faced with a gradually shrinking community, businesses and projects in the community are all doing what they can to remain relevant and competitive.

Centralised exchanges are also competing for dwindling interest and one way to do that is to do what everyone else is doing. In this case, it's having an NFT marketplace. OKX is one of the exchanges that has thrown its hat into the ring in this space. Let's check out what is offered and see how it differentiates itself from the rest.

As this article is only covering the OKX NFT Marketplace, you may also be interested in checking out our dedicated OKX deep-dive review.

In addition, we also have articles that dive into other aspects of the OKX Exchange: 

• OKX Trading Bots: Automated Trading on OKX
• OKX Earn: Earn interest while Hodling at OKX
• OKX Mobile App: Mobile Trading on the Go
• OKX Wallet: The Portal to Web3 
• OKX Security: Is OKX Safe?
• How to Sign-Up on OKX

Note: Users located in the US and UK are not supported.

OKX NFT marketplace

The first thing that stands out for me is the number of blockchains supported in this marketplace. Other centralised exchanges usually support either Ethereum or Solana or both but OKX has gone the whole nine yards with Polygon, Aptos, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Optimism, Klaytn, Immutable X, and their own OKC chain, in addition to the previous two mentioned. Should I be happy or sad that Cardano is not on the list?

Furthermore, to ensure there is deep liquidity, they also aggregate orders from the other major platforms such as OpenSea, LooksRare, Magic Eden, and IMX Official etc. Quite a resounding shot right off the bat.

The webpage itself is separated into 5 distinct sections: Football Cup, Featured, Marketplace, Launchpad and Stats.

Football Cup

This activity was launched in conjunction with the World Cup, as you can imagine from the title. Although the World Cup is over, I thought it's worth mentioning it here because the mechanics of it can be reused in the future for similar events. It's basically a kind of betting game with a twist.

Here's how it works:

Back your favourite team(s) by minting their NFTs, limited to three per wallet, for free and stake 0.01ETH per NFT as the "bet". OKX will put in USDT10 for each NFT minted into the prize pool. If you hold the NFT of the winning team, you are eligible to share in the prize pool, which is about USDT20,000. In the event of a tie, both teams get half of the pool to divvy up amongst the token holders. The losing team's prize pool gets added to the winning team's pool.

After the Final 8 games are played, you can either choose to exit and collect your earnings up until this point or hold on to the NFTs for potentially bigger prizes. I'd assume that if all 3 NFTs you hold did not make it into the semi-finals, there's no point sticking around.

Before the 3rd-place game kicks off, a snapshot is taken of all NFT holders of both teams. The prize pool is fixed at USDT100,000. This is shared amongst the holders of the winning team.

After the World Cup ends, all rewards are collected in one go and distributed into the token holder's wallets.

I can easily imagine similar mechanics in place for other sporting events in the future, and wouldn't be surprised if someone got inspired by this event. It's a great way to introduce NFTs to more of the broader public, those who are football fans but not yet crypto-savvy. Who knows, some new blood might've gotten in this way. The crypto community certainly needs all the ones that can be attracted.

Featured

This section is basically designed with discovery in mind. The top section of the page is for current promotions; the next three sections are for Trending NFTs, Recent Rockets, and Popular NFTs, all fancy ways of saying here's what's popular and talked-about. You can select three different timeframes to view these: 30 days, 7 days, and 24 hours.

The meatiest section is the Browse by Category section, where the real discovery takes place. There are a total of 8 categories with NFTs aggregated from all the supported blockchains.

These categories pretty much sum up the state of the NFT space. If you don't know what you're looking for, this is as good a space as any to start exploring what might tickle your fancy.

Marketplace

Traders who know what they are looking for would likely head straight over to the Marketplace tab. This is where you can search for a particular NFT you have in mind. The page offers the following filters: Status (Has Offers, Buy Now), Collections (search field available), Blockchain (multi-select ok), Categories, and Price (set your own min or max in the unit of your choice, i.e. ETH, BNB etc).

Clicking on an NFT brings you to the individual page where you can make an offer for it. Some information is available for your reference. This includes the history of the NFT, any current listings and offers, price history, NFT details pertaining to the blockchain and its contract address, properties to check for any rare traits, and the contract addresses for the owner and creator of the collection.

All the above is fairly basic info you'd find on any NFT marketplace, but what caught my eye was a disclaimer. The NFT I happened to be looking at turns out to be a bit suspicious, it's nice that they have some kind of warning about it. Trade at your own risk!

Launchpad

Exclusivity is often a premium in most situations, so when it comes to NFT drops, that's no exception. OKX works with artists, devs, and partners to offer exclusive drops to their NFT clientele. These events are highlighted in Launchpad, where, for a limited time, people can get their hands on newly minted NFTs, sometimes at a discounted price.

Of course, there is the risk that what you get isn't as valuable as you might think it is, and there might not be a lot of info for you to do research on before deciding whether to buy or not. So getting pieces like these can be a bit of a crap shot. It's up to you to decide whether it's worth the risk.

Stats

For the geeky stats nerds, OKX has some numbers to keep you happy, although it might not be enough for you to bounce with joy. The page toggles through three sections: Overview, Ranking, and Activity.

Overview

This section features numbers and graphs sorted by either individual chain, i.e. Ethereum or Solana, or a combination of both. You can find out about the NFT market cap, number of NFT holders, i.e. wallet addresses, comparisons between holders and traders, and the top 10 collections. Each metric can be viewed in varying timeframes, from 1 year to 24 hours.

Ranking

These are basically OKX's rankings of the NFT collections that are in their database. The highlight here is a Compare function where you can select any 2 collections from the list for comparison. Quite a handy tool to have.

Activity

This page is where you can see how the NFTs are performing. Search by Type (Created, Mint, List, Offer, Sales, Transfer), Collections, Blockchain, and Price. There is also the option to enter an address to search for a particular NFT.

Getting Down To Business

If all the above have succeeded in convincing you to give this marketplace a try, the next bit of information would be really helpful, so please pay some attention.

How to buy/sell NFTs

Buying and selling NFTs is fairly straightforward at the OKX NFT marketplace. To buy, click the "Connect Wallet" button to choose which wallet you want to connect to. While OKX offers a few standard choices (MetaMask, Phantom, WalletConnect, OKX Web wallet), one thing that stands out is the Watch-Only function where you can import an address just to see the assets and transactions. After the wallet is connected, you're ready to buy NFTs with the "Make Offer" or "Buy Now" button.

After exploring the OKX exchange, we found ourselves quite impressed with the OKX Wallet. This may just be the most functional and innovative self-custodial wallet created to date. You can learn more about it in our OKX Wallet Review.

How to mint NFTs

Minting NFTs on the OKX platform is also a walk in the park. The process begins by clicking on the Create NFT button on the Featured page. From there, you'll be guided throughout the entire process. OKX also allows you to list an NFT on multiple platforms, which is quite handy.

Conclusion

The OKX NFT Marketplace seems to have all the necessary bells and whistles you'd expect from something of its kind these days. This not being a user review, I can only say that everything looks spiffy from the outset. I do like that they support multiple blockchains, especially the layer 2s, as it will certainly help with cheaper gas fees. What is offered is also a decent selection.

The Launchpad has some iffy-looking NFTs but they get some credit for the Football Cup event, which would have driven up user activity. I also heart their Comparison function, good for research purposes. All in all, it's another place to consider doing some trades if you're so inclined.

OKX is one of the fastest-growing crypto exchanges and is well on its way to becoming one of the leading "all-in-one" platforms. If you want to know more about what is on offer, you can learn more in our dedicated OKX Review.