NFTs are an integral part of any large ecosystem that has a significant number of users and follows the crypto culture where NFTs are regarded as more than just a JPEG stored somewhere. Aptos’ NFT culture began with its testnet times and early collections, such as Aptos Monkeys, AptoRobos, Spooks, and others, which have been around for over 2 years. This indicates that Aptos has a growing NFT ecosystem, with newer collections being minted daily. Builders are relying on NFTs to build their communities.
[Also Read: Best Aptos Wallets]
Also, remember that NFTs are used even by DeFi protocols for gated access and other use cases. But where do these NFTs get traded on Aptos? In the initial days, numerous NFT marketplaces existed, including BlueMove, Topaz, Souffl3, and Mercato. However, most of these have since left the market. Thankfully, a few from the early days remain, continuing to serve the NFT ecosystem with their well-built marketplaces. Let’s talk about them.
NFT Marketplaces to trade NFTs on Aptos
Wapal
The go-to choice for any Aptos user and NFT trader should be Wapal, which serves not just as a marketplace but also as a no-code launchpad. This platform enables artists and builders to launch their editions, collections, or showcase their art for auction.
Wapal has one of the most active teams on Aptos and has a point system in place at the time of writing this, so users who bid, buy, sell, or list NFTs get time-weighted points, and this can lead to something in the future if the team decides to launch a token around it. Wapal also hosts weekly Spaces on X, providing updates for both builders and the community on the latest developments within the ecosystem.
Also, Wapal isn’t a restrictive marketplace, and thus shows you listings from the other marketplaces as well by aggregating the data from all around. If you had listed an NFT on Tradeport, you can easily see that over on Wapal and can trade it without having to pay anything extra, unlike how it is on Tradeport, where you pay a small extra fee for buying an NFT listed on Wapal.
Links: Wapal | Wapal Twitter
Tradeport
The Tradeport marketplace comes from the team that has brought one of the best tools for builders on Aptos – Indexer. The Tradeport marketplace is a multi-chain one with support for Aptos, Sui, Movement, Supra, Near, and Stacks. While it might seem cluttered, you can always select the chain of your choice and take a look at the overall picture.
Mercato, previously the Aptos-only marketplace from Indexer, has now moved to Tradeport. This marketplace offers a range of features, including aggregated data on NFT listings and history, a wallet leaderboard, and a Sniper section showcasing the latest activity. One can search through data, including the trading volume for the past 24 hours to All-time, and you can also find the NFT trading chart for each collection on their respective page.
Tradeport also has a launchpad that anyone can use to launch their collection or edition drops. It is easy to use and works as expected, but I find myself reaching out here more often than on Wapal to compare Aptos NFT data with other chains like Sui and Movement.
Links: Tradeport | Tradeport Twitter
Rarible
One of the large integrations done by Aptos on the NFT side is with Rarible. Still, while it remains one of the alternatives for users to trade NFTs, Rarible doesn’t allow for data from other marketplaces to show. The trading activity is too low here for anyone to get any good interest in using it over Wapal or Tradeport.
Rarible offers a user-friendly interface for trading NFTs, and Aptos integration is a valuable addition for users. Still, some things could get better here as well, with information like the number of holders, because the marketplace doesn’t show if the NFTs are staked, so the holder count for some of the significant collections is not accurate, and even the royalties are not correctly displayed for most of the Aptos collections.
Links: Rarible | Rarible Twitter
NFT marketplaces are one of the biggest platforms for any ecosystems as they enable everything that a user wants to do with images – buy, sell, list, bid, mint, and more. Aptos has a couple of very good marketplaces for NFTs and they offer all the needed features, but it is only Wapal and Tradeport as the ones, and if you don’t see any needed features, you can always send them the feedback on socials and these are teams that take all the feedback and work on them.
What NFTs to get on Aptos? It’s going to be a featured guide for that as well but the best Aptos NFT collections include AptoRobos, Aptos Monkeys, GUI Gang, The Loonies, Spooks, among a few others but we will do another guide for the same.
