Understand Genie and Gem in Five Minutes: Pioneers of the NFT Market Aggregation Platform

Source: ForesightNews

NFT has undoubtedly become one of the hottest topics in the entire cryptocurrency economy, as well as in the fields of fintech and entertainment. Unlike the early stages of the industry where the demands of ordinary users could be easily met, the entry of various "big players" has raised higher standards for the infrastructure of this field. Just like large transactions in traditional financial markets, there is now a market demand for more convenient ways to purchase a basket of NFT assets or conduct bulk buying and selling.

As a result, the importance of NFT market aggregation platforms has become increasingly prominent. They not only concentrate the previously fragmented NFT liquidity but also allow users to purchase multiple NFTs in a single transaction, significantly reducing transaction costs and meeting the bulk purchasing needs of large investors.

For example, on January 31, 20 CryptoPunks were swept up via Gem, with a total transaction price of 1683 ETH. On the other hand, ordinary users can also track collectors' wallet movements and the popularity of NFT series through bulk trading activities.

This article will introduce the currently popular NFT aggregation platforms on Ethereum, Genie and Gem, and provide a comparative analysis of these two platforms in terms of product features, user experience, fees, and platform performance.

Overall, from the perspective of the overall characteristics of these two NFT market aggregation platforms, Gem aligns more closely with the characteristics of an NFT market platform. It not only allows users to browse NFT series by transaction popularity like on OpenSea, collect their favorite NFTs, and view relevant specific data, but also provides a better experience than OpenSea.

For instance, gas fees are 30-40% cheaper, there is a shopping cart experience, one-click viewing of NFT investment portfolios, payment using all held ERC-20 tokens, and access to data analysis. Genie, on the other hand, focuses on the bulk selling and purchasing functions of NFTs, with price differences covered by ETH.

Genie: Focused on Bulk Selling and Purchasing of NFTs

The founder and CEO of the NFT aggregation market platform Genie is Scott Gray. The project began closed testing of its NFT market aggregator Genie Swap in August last year and officially launched in November, primarily supporting bulk purchasing and selling functions, allowing users to buy multiple NFTs (up to 60) from various markets in a single transaction and reduce transaction costs through aggregated trading.

Currently, Genie Swap supports trading market platforms including OpenSea, NFTX, NFT20, Rarible, and Larva Labs' CryptoPunks, and does not charge any platform fees.

From the Genie page, the homepage features Genie Swap functionality, with a very clean overall interface. The left side is the payment box, and the right side is the receiving box, where users can add multiple NFTs they wish to sell and purchase, with price differences covered by ETH.

Of course, since the NFTs that can be instantly sold in the left payment box currently rely solely on the NFT liquidity protocols NFTX and NFT20, which have relatively insufficient liquidity, most NFT series are not supported, and users can mostly only pay with ETH.

When launching Genie Swap, Genie also released the NFT listing feature Genie List, allowing users to list multiple NFTs for sale on various NFT markets with one click. Currently, it only supports listing on OpenSea and Rarible, with plans to support Coinbase NFT and other markets in the future.

Gem: The "CoinGecko" of NFT Aggregators

Gem aims to provide users with an NFT aggregation platform that contains a large supply and optimal prices from multiple NFT market platforms starting from the Ethereum blockchain. The main builders include authors from the academic publishing institution Springer Nature and DeFi industry professionals vasa, with LinkedIn profiles showing three other employees, including an iOS app developer.

Gem launched its Beta version on December 28 last year and currently aggregates NFTs from NFTX, NFT20, Rarible, OpenSea, and Larva Labs' CryptoPunks market, with plans to also aggregate LooksRare. Additionally, it can help users route through Uniswap V2 and V3, SushiSwap, and any liquidity via 0x, thus allowing users to pay with various ERC-20 tokens they hold when trading NFTs, and also enabling combinations of different tokens for payment.

Compared to ordinary NFT market platforms and aggregation platforms, Gem has a key advantage by adding a Web3 shopping cart feature, allowing users to add intended NFTs to the cart and pay for them all at once. Furthermore, Gem integrates Dune Analytics data for each NFT series, visually displaying sales volume, number of holders, real-time transaction data, and charts.

In terms of fees, Gem currently does not charge platform fees. Regarding gas fees, the official statement claims that using its platform to trade NFTs can save up to 39% in fees. After several tests, using Gem is indeed cheaper in terms of gas fees compared to purchasing directly on other platforms, whether buying one or multiple NFTs.

Gem is not just an NFT aggregation platform; it is also an NFT portfolio management platform. After connecting a wallet, Gem can quickly detect the NFTs held by the user, add relevant NFT series to the user's portfolio, and display key statistics such as floor price and trading volume.

In terms of feature additions and updates, Gem continuously optimizes its product by appropriately referencing user feature requests and feedback suggestions on its official website. The team is currently testing an NFT rarity ranking feature and is developing important functionalities such as displaying rarity details, bulk listing NFTs, and minting price displays. However, the current rarity ranking still has significant differences compared to mainstream rarity ranking tools like Rarity.

Comparison of Gem and Genie

In terms of purchasing experience, both platforms provide a smooth purchasing process. The difference is that Genie does not allow users to view an overview of the entire NFT market and does not display specific basic characteristics and data of NFTs, requiring users to jump to other NFT markets for that information. During transactions, Genie is suitable for bulk selling and purchasing of NFTs, with price differences covered by ETH. Due to the poor liquidity of NFTX and NFT20, users can mostly only purchase with ETH.

On Gem, users can browse while adding items to their shopping cart, without relying on other platforms, and can pay with any ERC-20 tokens they hold at the end, also supporting combinations of different tokens for payment. The shopping cart experience is undoubtedly an important aspect of any type of trading platform. On Gem, even if the webpage is refreshed after adding items to the cart, the NFTs previously added will not be cleared.

Additionally, in terms of product feature updates and additions, Gem acts more swiftly and has a slight edge over Genie in the speed of NFT price updates.

Moreover, Genie aims to be the "CoinGecko" of the NFT field, integrating trading data and basic data of NFT markets, as well as setting up a dedicated portfolio page, while also providing visual charts for multiple NFT series through integrated Dune Analytics data for user analysis.

In terms of data, although Gem launched later than Genie, starting this month, Gem's transaction volume has consistently been higher than Genie, sometimes reaching more than twice that of Genie. On February 14, the transaction volume reached $5.8 million, which only includes transactions of ETH, WETH, USDT, and USDC. In contrast, Genie had a transaction volume of $2.03 million yesterday. Overall, in just over a month since its launch, Gem has generated $150 million in transaction volume, while the earlier launched Genie has generated approximately $340 million in transaction volume.

The daily user count for Gem has gradually increased since its launch in January, with the number of users consistently slightly higher than Genie over the past two weeks, ranging from 400 to 1000 daily users for Gem, while Genie has between 200 to 900 daily users.

In terms of fees, both Gem and Genie have reduced gas costs through aggregated trading. However, overall, the gas fees for a single NFT on Gem are 5% to 40% lower than on Genie. For instance, on February 14, the average gas fee for a transaction of one NFT on Genie was about $32, while on Gem it was $28.

It is worth mentioning that both Gem and Genie do not charge platform fees, currently have no profit model, have not disclosed any funding situation, and have not released platform tokens. Genie founder Scott Gray previously stated that they are currently working hard to raise funds.

Benefiting from the advantages of NFT liquidity integration and trading aggregation, NFT market aggregators will become an indispensable part of the NFT field. Even OpenSea's newly launched venture capital department, OpenSea Ventures, has announced plans to invest in NFT aggregators and data analysis platforms that support OpenSea and other NFT market platforms.

Currently, there are also other projects exploring the NFT market aggregation field, such as Flip, which raised $6.5 million in seed funding in January (founded by UpOnly podcast host Brian Krogsgard), planning to open its NFT market aggregation platform to users this month.

Of course, these NFT market aggregation platforms are still in the early stages of development and need to continue exploring and optimizing product features and user experiences, including optimizing the retrieval of NFT series and contract addresses, metadata updates, price updates, and expanding functionalities.