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X2Y2 is an emerging NFT marketplace that was launched in February 2022. Right from its inception, X2Y2 has tried to be a solid rival to the giant of the NFT marketplaces, Opensea, and it looks as if the efforts are coming to fruition.
Over the past several weeks, X2Y2 has seen immense growth in its sales volume. According to data by Dappradar, X2Y2 generated $144.16 million worth of NFT sales from just 11,534 traders over the past week, compared to the $117.64 million generated from 155,734 traders on OpenSea.
We are still to find out whether it is self-orchestrated market-making, or the hard-earned reality in which X2Y2 is favoured as an NFT marketplace for the whales. One thing we can do though, is look deeper into the overtake that may rearrange the marketplace leaderboard and the reasons behind it.
In case you’ve never heard of X2Y2
Before the launch, X2Y2 addressed the “monopoly” on over 90% of all NFT transactions, and they wanted to change that by taking over a share of the market share. They had a strong strategy and goals, which led this marketplace to overwhelming growth.
In January, X2Y2 joined Twitter, clarified their roadmap and concept, and addressed the obvious comparisons to LooksRare, OpenDAO and Opensea. They also explained what these marketplaces have faced in the past, and how they plan to overcome it.
Winning growth strategy
OpenSea accounts for more than 90% of all NFT transactions. However, the platform’s centralized management and system downtime problems have resulted in new trading platforms like X2Y2, to take shape and succeed.
The new Ethereum-based NFT trading platform launched its X2Y2 token and, surprise surprise turned it into a governance tool. The team conducted what’s known as a “vampire attack” airdrop to attract OpenSea users. In crypto, a vampire attack refers to a tactical move projects employ to distribute free tokens to incentivize users of a competitor to start using their offering. In this case, the competitor was OpenSea.
X2Y2 airdropped 120 million tokens representing 12% of its 1 billion token supply to 861,417 wallets that traded on OpenSea between mid-June and mid-December 2021. The number of tokens distributed to each user was proportional to their amount of trading activity on OpenSea. There was also a precondition for airdrop claimers to list their OpenSea-listed NFTs on X2Y2 at the same price. It also emphasized high staking rewards, which led to a price spike of 156.59% in 24 hours. The platform wanted to attract users and gain publicity, and it successfully did that.
X2Y2 sold 15 million tokens divided into 1000 shares, priced at 1.5 ETH each, raising 1500 ETH from the sale. All ETH collected from the sale has been put into Uniswap to provide initial liquidity, while unsold X2Y2 tokens will be burned directly after the sale. Liquidity Provider (LP) tokens will also be burned to lock the liquidity permanently.
The NFT platform has seen its daily volumes surge to new highs in June, with its highest ever recorded day of volume coming on June 6 with $32.92 million. One of the reasons behind the platform’s bullish growth appears to be its zero-trading fees marketing campaign, which is reminiscent of what Binance is doing in US right now to take over the market led by Coinbase.
X2Y2’s NFT marketplace brought new features to the forefront of NFT trading. Those features include:
- Profit-sharing: X2Y2 is the first NFT profit-sharing platform. Users who stake their X2Y2 tokens on the platform will receive a % of the fees for all NFT trades proportional to their share. Other platforms, such as OpenSea, don’t offer profit-sharing.
- Bulk listings: Users can list all their NFTs simultaneously or list selected NFTs in one transaction. This saves on gas fees from having to pay for individual NFT listings.
- Bulk purchasing: Traders can purchase multiple NFTs with one transaction, paying a singular gas fee. This also saves on gas fees for frequent traders.
- Push notifications: X2Y2’s system automatically emails users the second there’s a bid or a purchase of one of their NFTs. It also notifies traders if their bid is accepted.
- Rarity statistics: X2Y2 features a brand-new rarity tracker that can track the rarity of items and also show the last price on OpenSea. Detailed analytics are included for each NFT and its history.
- Secret items: X2Y2 will be the first NFT platform to feature secret NFTs, and privacy will be one of their main angles in the future.
Final words
X2Y2 is a daring platform that aims to challenge OpenSea’s market dominance by sharing profits with users and developing a unique rewards system. The platform brought new interesting features such as Bulk Selling that helps users save on gas fees. Based on recent news, bulk purchase capability may become a deal breaker for new marketplaces, as just last month, Uniswap acquired Genie – the NFT aggregator that practically offers the same feature.
Despite the rise of alternative NFT platforms, OpenSea is still dominant in the NFT scene, and it remains to be seen whether X2Y2 will be able to become the 2nd largest platform or among the largest NFT platforms in the future. Let’s not forget that there is also Magic Eden, which is proving to be the dominant NFT platform for Solana assets.
