In contrast to platforms such as Spotify and Netflix, which provide unlimited digital content for a subscription fee, NFT platforms are built around the idea that just like physical content, digital content too can be scarce that is, limited in quantity and can therefore be meaningfully owned and traded.
These platforms leverage blockchain technology to verify the provenance of digital content, similar to how a traditional auction house might verify that a given work of art is in fact the original and not a replica, and some platforms even offer the ability to “burn” items, further reinforcing the concept of scarcity for these digital products.
Blockchain-based transaction logs can also facilitate royalty attribution, automatically sharing a percentage of revenue from second-hand sales with the original creator every time the NFT is traded.

While there are a number of factors to consider, we’ve found that it can be particularly helpful to characterize NFT marketplaces on a spectrum from streamlined to augmented. Streamlined marketplaces support a broader range of NFTs and offer more limited, generic services to sellers, while augmented marketplaces are highly specialized and provide a more full-service experience.
Streamlined platforms include services such as OpenSea and Rarible, which host both auctions and fixed-price sales for a wide variety of NFTs, and more closely resemble traditional platforms such as eBay, Esty, or Mercari. These marketplaces focus predominantly on enabling efficient transactions, often providing payment infrastructure to accept both credit cards and crypto payments in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and occasionally other specialty tokens.
They offer minimal additional services, and because of their breadth, these platforms generally have fairly large and varied user bases.