Task: Steemit Crypto Academy Season 2 : Selling and Buying NFT

My NFT market choice.

I googled "Sell NFT" and decided to explore the second highest recommended NFT platform for the task in hand by @levycore. The reasoning is simple. While everyone generally gravitates to the first most recommended, I wanted to see how is the second in line competing with the top. It should give me an insight into what does the competition leads to. Naturally, the top-rated platform is Opensea which has already been explored in the original post by levycore. I will be exploring Rarible.

Rarible seems to have a lot of positive feedback online. It also is one of the most common platforms where a lot of high-end NFTs have been traded. Recently, NFT was trending on twitter. Many tweets mentioned the Rarible NFT marketplace. This only has increased my curiosity about the platform.

What I am looking for:

• Community-Driven Platform
• User-friendly interface
• Empowering creators
• Easy Exploration
• Accessibility

The home page itself is the explore page. In the menu itself I noticed that the marketplace has its own dedicated tab for "community" which has a drop down that lets you explore the RARI token and how the community is always involved in every trade, technically at least.

Th explore page is also featuring the top sellers which shows a lot of promise from the platform. Having a constant feed about top sellers lets any curator identify quality NFT producers and at the same time gives every NFT creator a list of people to take inspiration from and compete against.

From within the explore page itself you can check out the live auctions ongoing at the time. This is something I like. Instead of browsing through multiple pages you can instead bump into an incredible NFT at an auction right at the home page. It is up to date, and saves you a few clicks from losing out on an auction.

Other than that, the UI is good enough for any collector or curator to browse different collections that are "hot" and discover creators that have a good rep going for them. I like that the different options for both collectors and creators are already featured on the homepage. As a first-timer it is always nice to get acquainted to the field without having to dive too deep. It is simple, and that is why I liked it.

As a collector or creator, I would like to see what is available at a marketplace. The explore option in the home page is a rather easy way to get your hands wet in what is available in the platform. With just one click you can select from the top searched items and turn your explore page into a hunting grounds. The filter's dropdown is very thoughtful of the different search categories any NFT fanatic would be looking for.

How to make a purchase on Rarible

• The first and foremost thing is to connect your wallet to Rarible. In my case I am using the MetaMask wallet.
  I will go ahead and click on "Connect wallet"

• In the next screen loadout, you can select the wallet of your choice from the different options. I will be selecting "MetaMask", which is also the most popular on Rarible. You will have to agree to a few ToC if it is your first time connecting.

• Now select the NFT you want to PURCHASE or PLACE A BID on:

Selling an NFT on Rarible.

• Click on "Create" option on the top right hand corner.

• Select if you want to create a single piece or multiple. Note: Single pieces have timed auction options on them.

Single Option

• Click on "Select a file" and choose from the item you want to upload as NFT. You can choose JPEG, PNG, GIF etc at the max size of 30mb.

• You can see the preview once you have selected your item along with your username/wallet address as the owner and creator on top of the preview.

• Select the type of Selling action. You can choose one from either Fixed price, Timed Auction, or Unlimited Auction.

Fixed price lets you set a price for which your NFT can instantly be bought	Timed Auction lets you set the starting bid, starting date and ending date of the bids	Unlimited Auction lets the buyer's control the outcomes completely

• Set the Title, Description, Royalties and Properties of your NFT. Click on Create.

Multiple Option

• Follow all the same steps as before. But there is no option for "timed auction". The rest is the same.

• Another thing to set in Multiple is "Number of Copies"

• Once you have made these settings, you can press on create.

Pros and Cons

Rarible has plenty of pros for me. The UI itself is a big plus. As someone who is new to NFT, I always will prefer an interface that lets me dive into the scene and understand the market before making a move. The homepage itself is designed to cater both to my collector side as much as it does to the creator side. Most of the information is readily available. The best sellers, the hot items, the prices are clearly indicated. More over I can easily browse the different types of NFT through a single click on "explore" or search for them with one click.

The selling and buying options are pretty clear cut. They are as easily to follow as they are accessible. This makes my experience on Rarible repeatable and will want me to use the platform again as I can expect what is to be done and what to expect. They also support many types of wallets that allow me to use different wallets, whichever I feel comfortable with.

The biggest advantage is that the platform is well established. I can feel secure about each transaction and each NFT is safe for storage. There also is a FAQ page that clearly explores and explains most of the concerns staring from NFT basics to how the platform operates.

The activity page is another undermined tool that isn't readily accessible in many platforms. The page allows to follow all the actions you have taken as well as keep an eye on the market itself. You can access all information including the latest follow to latest purchases to stay up to date.

However, there are a few things that bother me with Rarible.

One, the RARI coin isn't as secure as it seems. It brings along a new form of interaction where both the token and NFT are susceptible to easy wash trading tactics. This can highly influence the gamification of the platform as well as dilute the market with false security. I will have to look more into the token and how it is used/abused to completely be sure that Rarible can fully be trusted to hold the value of my assets.

Secondly, there seems to be no other option than ETH to perform transactions. The cryptoverse is diversifying at a fast rate. The portfolios of many investors is saturated with many assets. More and more platforms are adopting different kinds of coins for transactions. Rarible is very limited to ETH which makes it highly unlikely that I will want to always make a purchase with it, especially with the gas fees being at its highest.

Thirdly, Rarible isn't as transparent as it may seem. They do have plenty of information about their RARI token and how the community is involved in receiving RARI and how governance in handled within the platform. However, there is no transparency when it comes to what the blockchain is doing or planning to do in the long term. If and when I become a collector on Rarible, I would like to know where my collection stands in 5 years or so.

To conclude I would say that the competition in the NFT section has risen to unseen levels in the last few months. This has given rise to many marketplaces and different approaches to NFT. We are even seeing mainstream celebrities jump on the hypetrain. While the kinds of Opensea and Rarible have grown a reputation for themselves, it is important to seek out other budding marketplaces to make sure you have an edge with the platforms that are already established.

At the end of 2020 I was looking at the budding NFT scene. I had sought for help on multiple online forums on how to get started on NFTs. Back then it still wasn't as huge as it is today. On something like Rarible, you can immediately learn and get started on NFT without wasting a single day. Today, the platforms are much more accessible and the fate of your collection and investments lies only in your decision making.

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