Original author: Weilin, PANews

Since Magic Eden launched the Rune on April 23, it has quickly taken a leading position in the Rune trading market. According to the GeniiData panel, as of 12:00 on June 12, Magic Eden's market trading volume share ranked first, far ahead of the second market OKX and the third market UniSat.

In just two months, Magic Eden, a cross-chain NFT platform founded on Solana, received positive reviews from Runes community users for its "good user experience" and "fast infrastructure improvement". From the perspective of marketing and development strategies, the company's development strategy is leaning towards the Bitcoin ecosystem. In the market competition, Magic Eden has seized a rare opportunity.

Magic Eden wins by relying on user experience and successfully seizes the leading position in the Runes market

On June 10, xiyu, an early KOL in the Bitcoin ecosystem, said, “You can see the candlestick chart on the Runes trading interface of Magic Eden... Denominated in sats, you can see the price trend of $dog since 4.24, which is getting closer and closer to the experience of cex.” Such feedback is a microcosm of Magic Eden’s continuous advancement in the Runes trading market.

According to GeniiData, as of June 12, the trading volume of Magic Eden was US$4.19 million, OKX was US$2.72 million, and UniSat was US$657,000. Magic Eden ranked first, accounting for approximately 54% of the market trading share.

MagicEden is not only the Rune Ecosystem transaction, but also often tops the list of full-chain transaction platforms. As of 12:00 noon on June 12, in the data of the top transaction markets of various blockchains summarized by Tiexo, Magic Eden's 7-day transaction volume and monthly transaction volume market share were 37.56% (transaction volume of 69.6 million US dollars) and 34.34% (transaction volume of 32.8 billion US dollars), respectively. It can be seen that the Ethereum-based transaction market Blur followed closely behind, followed by OpenSea.

Magic Eden’s market leadership is largely due to its rapid embrace of the Bitcoin ecosystem and its outstanding performance in the Bitcoin ecosystem and Runes transactions.

As early as March last year, Magic Eden launched the inscription market. With the new popularity of Bitcoin and inscriptions, from March 4 to March 5 this year, inscriptions accounted for 84% of Magic Eden's 24-hour trading volume, while Solana NFT's trading volume accounted for only 13%.

Currently, according to Dune data, since November last year, Bitcoin ecosystem transaction volume has gradually expanded in Magic Eden. On June 1, Bitcoin accounted for 27.8% of its transaction volume, Ethereum accounted for 23.8%, Solana accounted for 48.1%, and Polygon accounted for 0.3%. On April 1, Bitcoin's transaction volume accounted for 50.3%.

Magic Eden cross-chain transaction volume. Blue represents Ethereum, orange represents Bitcoin, green represents Solana, and purple represents Polygon.

In terms of user experience, Magic Eden stands out from its competitors. According to user feedback, although OKX Wallet has more domestic users, it does not support order scanning and can only interact with its own OKX Web Wallet. UniSat user feedback is not very ideal. On June 11, a rune index bug occurred. Although the team quickly fixed it, it still affected the interactive experience of some users. In comparison, Magic Eden has a smoother user experience, a more global user base, a simple interface, supports multiple order scanning, and has low transaction fees.

On June 4, Magic Eden's BTC ecological trading platform was updated. A user summarized: 1. It already has the offers function, which means you can place an order to buy and list the price you want. 2. Correspondingly, you can also sell your NFT directly to a seller. 3. The trend analysis chart has reached a very high level and the cycle can be adjusted. 4. The sweeping function is very powerful, but it is still not very convenient to use. 5. A page of pictures can already display quite a lot of pictures. This user said, "Its power is beyond imagination, and everyone has watched it develop step by step."

Looking back at the early days of the development of the BTC Inscription ecosystem, the UniSat platform once seized the traffic entrance for Inscription new issuance and trading. But now it seems to have missed a good layout. As early as February of this year, a user analysis indicated that UniSat encountered multiple difficulties. The first was in terms of strategic decision-making. UniSat did not know which ecosystem to focus on, reflecting a state of confusion. Secondly, it faced technical difficulties and had no way to realize the sectors it wanted to do. "As a result, seven or eight months have passed, and there has been almost no substantial progress in ecological empowerment. The empowerment of $sats has become an advertising slogan, but this slogan has been overdrawn too much..."

Against this backdrop, from May to June, UniSat airdropped “Pizza” inscriptions to eligible user wallets in an attempt to spark a new wave of inscription popularity. Competition in the market is fierce.

Magic Eden leans towards Bitcoin ecosystem

Judging from Magic Eden’s marketing strategy, the BTC ecosystem has become one of the company’s development focuses, while its competitors Blur and OpenSea have not caught up with this train.

The four latest videos released on Magic Eden’s official YouTube channel are all related to inscriptions or runes, further demonstrating its ambition to strengthen its influence in the Bitcoin community.

Magic Eden's latest 4 videos on YouTube are all about inscriptions or runes

“We believe Runes will bring new vitality to the Bitcoin ecosystem, unlocking a new wave of developers and new asset types that were previously only possible on other layers,” Magic Eden co-founder and COO Z Yin recently told Decrypt. “We have a long-term belief in native Bitcoin activity… For us, adding Runes to the existing Ordinals market is a natural choice.”

In addition, Magic Eden is also breaking the original boundaries in terms of incentive programs. Earlier this year, Magic Eden announced that it would open source its minting and trading protocols in collaboration with the new Non-Fungible DAO. The move is part of Magic Eden's broader strategy to decentralize the platform and empower the NFT community. In addition to the open source protocol, Magic Eden also plans to launch a crypto token called "NFT" to reward NFT traders. Non-Fungible DAO will distribute NFT tokens to users who actively participate in the Magic Eden ecosystem, including those who use markets and minting protocols on different blockchains.

In addition to launching NFT tokens, Magic Eden will also expand its existing diamond reward program to all four currently supported blockchains: Solana, Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Polygon. The diamond program provides rewards for users who complete tasks and participate in the Magic Eden market. Currently, community users are looking forward to Magic Eden's diamond airdrop.

Although Magic Eden has achieved phased success in the Rune ecosystem, on June 10, the Rune project RARE•WIZARD•ORB caused some community controversy due to its minting fee of 0.00069 BTC. Some users also criticized the role played by Magic Eden, which brought certain negative impacts.

However, in general, by leaning towards the Bitcoin ecosystem and continuously optimizing the user experience, Magic Eden has achieved a dominant position in terms of trading volume in the rune market and has become the main battlefield. Its subsequent actions are worthy of further observation.