Ordinals Upset NFT Marketplace Hierarchy: OKX Ousts Blur From Top Spot

Blur and Open Sea’s failure to support Ordinals trading has led to them falling behind the OKX NFT marketplace. As Ordinals fever peaks higher, will they adapt be crushed by them?

Eva Senzaj Pauram

Dec 21, 2023 - 2 min read

Ordinals have been derailing multiple blockchains of late, and now appear to be shattering the hierarchy of NFT marketplaces. In the past week, the OKX digital collectibles platform has displaced traditional players as the number one marketplace for trading non-fungible tokens.

OKX is enjoying its advantage as a first mover into the realm of the Bitcoin-based NFT-alike tokens. It became the first multichain wallet to allow trading of Bitcoin Ordinals in May when it launched the Ordinals Marketplace.

With a 24-hour peak volume of $50 million on Dec. 18, the now number-one non-fungible assets platform has registered a trading volume of $343 million in the last seven days. During the same period, its top three competitors (Blur, Open Sea, and Magic Eden), amassed only $180.25 million combined.

The perks of allowing Ordinals trading were becoming visible in November when, according to DappRadar, OKX rose to number two in the NFT marketplace rank with a 32% dominance in the industry.

There is no such thing as stability in the digital collectibles market. NFTs are speculative assets highly dependent on the overall liquidity of the cryptocurrency market. Yet, instead of adapting to demand, other market players are letting the good times pass them by. According to the CEO of ContentFi Labs, Nick Ruck, "Blur and OpenSea have not yet allowed trading of these Bitcoin-based NFTs, so they've started to fall behind in terms of volume due to the huge demand of Ordinals."

At the time of writing, the Chinese platform requires a mere $10 million to surpass the pro-trader market disruptor Blur as December's user-favorite marketplace for trading digital collectibles.

OpenSea might be the biggest loser of the Ordinals saga. The market leader during the first NFT bull market has dropped to 5th in user rank in the past week, falling behind another platform allowing the trading of Bitcoin NFTs - UniSat.

It has been almost a year since developer Casey Rodarmor launched Ordinals to 'make Bitcoin fun again'. After an initial surge, the tokens soon felt out of favour with users during the summer months.

However, they have since recovered, and due to their growing popularity, Bitcoin network fees have surged to yearly highs and Inscriptions sales have been setting daily records. The Bitcoin community has engaged in heated discussions about the burden Ordinals pose to the network, and other networks have replicated the technology

While most actors in the crypto space have been relatively active in adapting to Ordinals, established NFT marketplaces haven't. Now that the competition is winning, will they finally wake up to Ordinals?