An Interview With Magic Eden

Magic Eden is the leading cross-chain NFT platform, focused on offering the best experience & driving mass adoption of web3.  In an exclusive interview with BitcoinWorld, We bring up what differentiates Magic Eden from its competitors,  This interview is conducted between our Editor In Chief & Chris Akhavan, Bitcoin GM at Magic Eden.

For our readers who might be unfamiliar, can you briefly describe what Magic Eden is and the vision that led to its creation?

Magic Eden was founded in 2021 by CEO Jack Lu, CTO Sidney Zhang, COO Zhuoxun Yin, and chief engineer Zhoujie Zhou. Intrigued by the potential of NFTs to redefine value and ownership in the digital era, the founders started Magic Eden as a platform to allow users to access, collect, and interact with NFTs easily. Launched in September 2021, Magic Eden quickly became the leading Solana NFT platform, then further expanded into a leading cross-chain platform by enabling Polygon, Ethereum & Bitcoin.Magic Eden is the leading cross-chain NFT platform, focused on offering the best experience & driving mass adoption of web3. Our platform empowers users across thousands of digital communities to create, discover, and collect unique NFTs.

With the increasing number of platforms in the crypto and NFT space, what differentiates Magic Eden from its competitors?

Magic Eden and our cross-chain products have all been deeply battle tested & integrated into each of their respective ecosystems. We’re the true cross chain platform that unites vastly different audiences under one fluid platform. We work extremely hard to remain first on the forefront of identifying & encouraging innovation within the NFT and web3 space. Ordinals are a great example of this, as we identified a demanded opportunity and took a leap to be the first well known player to build a top secure audited platform early on. We’ll continue these efforts towards the ultimate goal of bringing more users and creator segments into web3.

Your platform has a significant emphasis on Ordinals collectibles, both BRC-20 and non-BRC-20. Can you explain to our audience what Ordinals are and why they hold such importance in the crypto world?

Ordinals are an innovative open source project that launched on Bitcoin mainnet earlier this year. They are composed of two things – Ordinal Theory & Inscriptions. Ordinals unlocked inscribing data on Satoshi’s, thus creating a new builders ecosystem on Bitcoin. The data you can inscribe includes multiple file types, including images, which remind us of traditional NFTs. Not only can we now build on Bitcoin to expand its use, but this also benefits the miners that help secure the network. This also changes NFTs as we know it, as Ordinals are immutable & permissionless, giving users full ownership of their assets on Bitcoin. On top of that there are many special forms of rarity & value in Satoshis that people can choose to inscribe on. This is all a dream for NFT enthusiasts, collectors & general Bitcoin lovers!

How has the community’s response been to Magic Eden’s offerings, and how do you plan on fostering and growing this community engagement in the future?

The community was immediately extremely excited when Magic Eden entered the Ordinals space. Users were trading Ordinals OTC and on Google Sheets just earlier in the year and when we entered we were the first big known player to really enter the Ordinals scene. From our proven efforts, the community is aware how we continuously build the needed tools they ask for on chains that we support. We plan to continue doubling down on our product offerings and growing the space in a manner that fits that of Bitcoin’s ethos.

While the statistics and achievements so far are impressive, where do you see Magic Eden in the next year or two? Are there any exciting developments or partnerships on the horizon that users should look forward to?

We certainly expect Magic Eden to continue to be the leader in Ordinals & expand our product suite as the infrastructure grows for builders on Bitcoin. There are so many developments happening not just from Magic Eden, but also the Bitcoin community and that’s extremely exciting.

Your platform, Magic Eden, has achieved a significant market share in the Ordinals collectibles segment, with 86.5% of all non-BRC-20 volume. What strategies and innovations do you credit for such dominance, especially in attracting 82% of new users in August?

Our product experience definitely helped to create such success within our product. We have offered strong products on other chains for quite a long time and understand the experience creators and users want. Bringing that expertise over to Ordinals really helped to decrease the heavy friction of the Ordinals onboarding experience, and both creators and users really recognized that.

The Magic Eden Launchpad has become the primary choice for creators, as evidenced by the Ordinal Maxi Biz launch and the anticipated Asprey Bugatti collection. What does the Magic Eden Launchpad offer creators that sets it apart from other platforms? And how do you ensure that these collaborations are successful in terms of volume and traction?

Magic Eden Launchpad offers a familiar user experience with smooth low friction. It’s really simple to mint your first or your 100th Ordinal on our Launchpad. Users routinely speak to this experience, and that community voice plays a role in why creators choose our service for the largest launch. Creators get to focus on other things on their launch day and can worry less about the tech.

As of July 10th, Magic Eden had contributed a significant amount to Bitcoin miners via its transactions. How does this commitment align with your platform’s broader vision and values? Additionally, how do you foresee this collaboration benefiting both the Bitcoin ecosystem and Magic Eden users?

We strongly believe that Ordinals are a supercharger for Bitcoin. They completely reshaped Bitcoin as we know it in a positive way. Bitcoin miners keep the network as secure as it is and Ordinals make up such a large portion of the transactions on Bitcoin, which rewards those miners.

Both Ordinal Maxi Biz and Bitmap have experienced significant transaction activity on Magic Eden. What insights can you share about these specific collections that have led to their respective success? Moreover, how does Magic Eden plan to support and promote upcoming and existing collections to achieve similar milestones?

One thing that both of these projects have in common is really strong communities that mirror strong conviction in building on Bitcoin. There really is something special about building a strong community from the ground up in a web3 native way. We continuously celebrate these creators with exposure to their milestones achieved. Being community centric, we have a great line to the communities and love to celebrate together. We’ll be holding an Ordinal Night event with several creators, including OMB, at Bitcoin Amsterdam on October 12th to look to get continued exposure to new audiences for these well deserved creators!

With a focus on product development in Ordinals, Q3 saw the release of new features, and there’s an anticipation of more by quarter’s end. Can you give our readers a sneak peek into what’s coming next for Magic Eden? And how do these features cater to the evolving needs of the crypto collectible community?

We consistently like to deliver products that fit the desire of the ecosystem. The amount of features our developers has shipped has been widely applauded. One exciting feature we announced recently is that we will enable Rare and exotic Sats buying & selling on Magic Eden. Rare & Exotic sats have grown significant interest in the Ordinals space, and this something that not only appeals to the Ordinals collectors but also generally anyone who holds Bitcoin… which as we know is many people.

With Magic Eden contributing over $2.4M to Bitcoin miners, there are inevitable environmental concerns tied to Proof-of-Work mining. How do you respond to critics who believe platforms like yours are exacerbating the environmental issues tied to blockchain?

This is of course an ongoing larger conversation & debate related to Bitcoin. However it’s important to note that the majority of Bitcoin mining is fueled by sustainable energy, and Bitcoin is quite suitable for renewable energy. For example, El Salvador mines Bitcoin with 100% renewable energy from volcanoes. Miners being conscious of utilizing renewable energy has gone a very long way to address this since Bitcoin’s inception.

With such a significant market share in the Ordinals collectibles segment, there are concerns about centralization and monopolistic tendencies. How do you address these concerns, especially when decentralization is a foundational principle for many in the crypto community?

We believe our success to date can purely be attributed to users choosing their favorite product for Ordinals, without any monopolistic tendencies. We actually encourage more builders on Bitcoin with our platform’s efforts. For example, our Bitcoin platform is built off an open source and trustless Bitcoin Ordinals PSBT signer library (reference). Additionally we released a public API designed to empower developers in creating more innovative experiences on Bitcoin. We understand open values as core pillars to the Bitcoin community and with all of our efforts look to incorporate that collaborative ethos.

While Magic Eden’s statistics are impressive, some critics argue that platforms often inflate their numbers or use certain metrics to their advantage. How can users and potential investors be assured of the authenticity and transparency of Magic Eden’s reported figures?

The beauty of web3 operations is everything is transparently on chain for anyone to track. It is of course worth acknowledging that Ordinals are still very early and a little complicated to track data or splice into segments, but there are a few places that users refer to to track stats and cross reference.

The crypto and NFT space has been frequently labeled as a ‘bubble’, with some drawing parallels to the dot-com era. How does Magic Eden plan to ensure its longevity and viability if or when the market faces a significant downturn?

It’d be impossible to not be aware of what people say or market conditions, but that isn’t slowing us down. We’re doubling down in our efforts and believe in NFTs and web3. While we continue the operations that everyone loves, we believe NFTs have a much bigger future ahead. We’re focused on finding and bringing new segments and experience offerings, and onboarding the next wave. That’s always been in the vision.

Given the volatility and unpredictability of the crypto market, how do you manage the balance between driving aggressive growth for Magic Eden and ensuring sustainability and security for your users?

As quickly as we ship things we also make sure to do things the right way. Everything we do will always prioritize the security of our users. For example our Bitcoin platform as a whole was built in a Hackathon, however that does not entail shortcuts where we skip auditing. With our strong conviction in NFTs, web3 and Ordinals we have staffed our team up aggressively to make sure we maintain speed, quality and security.