Non fungible Tokens otherwise known as NFTs is maybe a term you’ve heard when looking up blockchain games, virtual worlds and rare Cryptokitties collectibles you can breed and sell for millions of dollars, well, not quite yet, but maybe one day! Problem is, where do you buy NFTs from?

You can buy NFTs on third party marketplaces like Opensea, Rarible, or SuperRare. Or directly from marketplaces built into blockchain game platforms such as on Decentraland or Enjin. Some NFTs are earned by ‘staking’ or won during games as rewards. Game developers can also ‘airdrop’ free NFTs to players.

Some of these marketplaces or methods may already be familiar to you but you might not know much about them. Well, this article will be a quick guide to getting you started.

Buying NFTs on third party marketplaces

What makes blockchain marketplaces so attractive is that they are decentralized and there is no centralized party holding the digital asset due to all transactions occurring through smart contracts. And, your asset stays in your wallet until you’re ready to sell.

Opensea

The most well known and largest marketplace for all kinds of NFTs and crypto collectables is Opensea. Established in 2018, Opensea now has over 4 million crypto collectables in 200 categories on sale or for auction. NFTs include Virtual Lands, gaming assets such as wearables or weapons, digital art, ENS domain names and more.

Opensea is built on the Ethereum blockchain. Transactions are made through crypto wallets that can hold your NFT once you’ve bought it.

You can buy NFTs in several cryptocurrencies, mostly ETH, DAI or USDC, as well as in game tokens of some game developers platforms.

You can find more info about Opensea here.

Rarible

Rarible is another marketplace that sells Non Fungible Token assets from art to game assets and virtual land. Rarible also lets you mint (make) your own NFTs which you can sell if you want, but that’s up to you.

Creators can also earn Royalties when their NFT is sold by resellers on third party marketplaces by creating a royalty fee in the smart contract of the NFT.

This is great for giving creators an income for their work even on resell values. It’s pretty impossible to do this on non blockchain marketplaces. Normally, resell markets only reward the reseller and not the original creator.

For instance, if I buy a painting off of you and then resell it on eBay, you wont get any of the resell value because I will most likely not give you any of it!

Whereas, on marketplaces like Rarible, it can be written into the code of the smart contract of the NFT that if I resell your painting you will automatically receive a percentage royalty fee of the resell price.

This is incredibly innovative for supporting creators to earn an income from their creations even in the aftermarket. Check out more about Rarible here.

SuperRare

If you’re on the hunt for unique collectible digital art, SuperRare may just be the place for you to check out. Artists are authenticated and selected by SuperRare and to date over 11,000 pieces have been collected with over $4.5 million earned by artists since it began in 2017.

All art on SuperRare is a one off, limited edition piece and provenance is guaranteed and authenticated via smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain.

SuperRare aims to be more than just a marketplace for trading collectable art works. It sees artists and collectors coming together and creating a social community where both artists and collectors can display their art collections in galleries, or what the pioneers of SuperRare call ‘social collecting’.

So if you want more than just to buy blockchain art NFTs and would like to be part of a community, SuperRare may be a great place to look around. We have a more in depth article on SuperRare here.

Buying NFTs on gaming platform marketplaces

As well as being able to buy NFTs on third party marketplaces, you can also buy them inside gaming platforms themselves.

Decentraland

Decentraland, established in 2017, has now expanded its native marketplace to include avatars and names as well as its established Land sales.

Land parcels fetch a lot of money so depending on your budget, it might be hard to find a plot for a reasonable price. But if you are creative and have a vision for building a business in a virtual world, it is possible to rent virtual land and create a shop to sell anything you can digitize.

Players will be needing things like wearables, garden plants, furniture, advertising space and even transport like bikes or cars. you could buy NFT assets on the marketplace and resell them in own your shop or display them in your own gallery if you fancied!

Decentraland is more than just a game platform, there are already many varied events taking place such as art exhibitions, fashion shows, sports events, casinos, and conferences to name a few. Each event usually offers a chance to purchase limited edition NFTs as well as giving away freebies for attending!

Enjin

One gaming platform that is leading innovation in the NFT market is Enjin. Powered by the Ethereum blockchain, Enjin has big potential to bring digital asset ownership to mainstream gaming. You can buy, sell, create assets (NFTs) and use them in different multiverse games.

Use the mobile Enjin Wallet to buy, sell, store and view your NFT assets. Many big gaming companies like Minecraft are integrating with Enjin so you will be able to use your NFT assets in their games.

Find out more about the Enjin Platform here.

Other gaming platforms and virtual worlds

Other platforms include virtual worlds Cryptovoxels, MegaCryptopolis, The Sandbox, within each you can buy and sell NFT digital assets.

If you are looking for blockchain games to play you can explore games like Ethermon, Cryptokitties, or F1 Delta Time, where you can buy, earn, or win assets and actually own them. Unlike in current non blockchain games where what you buy, like a sword or magic potion, is only yours to play within the game.

Earning and Staking NFTs

Several projects give you the opportunity to earn NFTs from staking or farming. F1 Delta Time, a racing car game, lets you stake your cars to earn passive income, the longer you stake the more REVV you’ll earn (REVV is the in game currency you can buy assets with or pay to enter races).

Read this F1 Delta Time review for more details.

Winning NFTs in games as rewards or prizes

The chance to win non fungible token assets is possible in games as developers give them away as prizes. For instance, The Sandbox game regularly gives away assets, $SAND and even LANDS on their weekly livestreams as well as rewards for designing games. Best way to find out how to win some NFTs is to join gaming projects twitter, Discord or Telegram channels for a heads up.

NFT Airdrops – warning about scams

Airdrops are well known in the Crypto world. The MEME airdrop was based on a Twitter yield farming joke but quickly turned into an NFT DEFI Yield farming project that airdropped 28000 MEME NFTs to 250 Telegram account holders. Learn more about MEME here.

A word of warning. If you are new to crypto please be aware that there are a lot of scammers out there. They create convincing social media pages or websites that look like the real game or platforms website/ page with a slight change in the domain name.

Be vigilante and double check the website, or wallet you are about to download is genuine. Especially when it comes to airdrops, giveaways or presale events.

And finally – you’ll need a few things before you start

There are a few things you’ll need to set up before you can buy from these marketplaces. You’ll need a wallet to store the NFTs as well as some cryptocurrency to pay for them with.

This is where a lot of people are put off getting involved in collecting NFTs, playing blockchain games, or buying Art or music NFTs. Don’t forget we are right at the beginning of a new technology that is developing as it rolls out, and so you are pretty much one of the first groups of people to explore this new realm.

NFTs are sold in whichever coin or token is the preferred choice of the platform selling them. Often you can buy them with ETH but sometimes you’ll need to have a token such as, for example, you’ll need $SAND (if buying a Sandbox NFT) plus a small amount of Ether (ETH) to pay for gas fees (The Sandbox is powered by the Ethereum Blockchain).

You’ll also need to know how and where to buy cryptocurrencies and what wallets to store them in. This guide here will show you how.