Written by: Glendon, Techub News
In this crypto winter, the NFT sector is undoubtedly the hardest hit. Trading volumes plummeted, user numbers declined, and project teams withdrew funding. The entire market seems to have hit the rewind button. After NFT trading platform Nifty Gateway and social platform Rodeo announced closures earlier this January, another NFT platform plans to halt some operations, seeking transformation and survival amid the downturn.
Magic Eden, once a phenomenon-level multi-chain platform in the NFT market, is also inevitably undergoing a life-or-death strategic contraction during this winter: closing its Bitcoin and Ethereum EVM markets and stopping support for its multi-chain wallet.
Yesterday, according to Blockspace citing insiders, Magic Eden is expected to shut down its Bitcoin and Ethereum EVM trading platforms in the first week of March. Subsequently, the multi-chain wallet will enter export-only mode in mid-March (allowing users to withdraw assets only) and will fully cease services in early April. An official announcement is likely to be made as early as this Friday. However, it’s worth noting that the platform will still support Solana NFTs and assets.
This strategic shift signifies a major transformation for the platform: bidding farewell to its two-year multi-chain expansion strategy and reallocating core resources to focus on the Solana ecosystem and its transformation development.
Magic Eden’s Rise: From Solana Unicorn to Multi-Chain Dominator
Founded in September 2021 by former Coinbase product manager Zhuoxun Yin, FTX former employee Jack Lu, Uber Eats founding engineer Sidney Zhang, and Facebook former engineer Zhuojie Zhou, Magic Eden initially focused on NFT trading within the Solana ecosystem. With a strategy of zero listing fees and a 2% transaction fee, it quickly captured the Solana NFT market. On its launch day, trading volume exceeded $50,000, and within a few months, it accounted for over 90% of Solana’s NFT trading volume.
2022 was the breakout year for Magic Eden. In March, it completed a $27 million angel round; in June, it raised $130 million at a $1.6 billion valuation in a Series B funding round led by top firms including Paradigm, Sequoia Capital, Greylock, and Electric Capital, officially becoming a unicorn. During this period, Magic Eden not only solidified its dominance in Solana but also launched the Launchpad platform, further expanding its ecosystem.
With the rise of Bitcoin Ordinals (a Bitcoin-specific NFT standard) in early 2023, Magic Eden began rapidly expanding its multi-chain strategy. In March, it launched a Bitcoin NFT trading platform, capturing over half of the Ordinals trading volume within a week. By 2024, the platform had expanded to support Ethereum, Polygon, and Bitcoin Runes, becoming a true cross-chain NFT hub.
According to Blockspace data, by mid-2024, Magic Eden surpassed Blur and OpenSea to become the world’s highest monthly trading volume NFT marketplace, with a record $734 million in transactions in March 2024. During this period, Magic Eden held an absolute dominance in Bitcoin Ordinals and Runes markets, with trading volumes accounting for about 80%.
Additionally, CoinGecko’s September 2024 report further highlighted that Magic Eden had become the top NFT marketplace of 2024, with a market share reaching 36.7% by August and maintaining the number one position in trading volume for six consecutive months.
Magic Eden’s development reflects the golden age of the NFT market. Its current retreat from multi-chain expansion and shift toward crypto entertainment again reveal the structural crisis facing the industry.
Magic Eden’s Transformation Path
In fact, Magic Eden began betting on the crypto entertainment sector early on and gradually shifted its focus. For example, in its early development phase, it launched subsidiary projects like Eden Games, aiming to combine NFTs with gaming and social experiences. In September 2023, Magic Eden introduced the “Lucky Buy” feature, marking a turning point in its transformation. This feature gamified the NFT purchasing process, allowing users to win high-value NFTs through roulette-style gameplay with small bets, shifting the platform from a traditional trading marketplace to one emphasizing user experience and entertainment. In April last year, Magic Eden acquired decentralized trading platform Slingshot, attempting to move beyond pure NFT trading into broader crypto asset services. In October, it launched the “Packs” feature to further strengthen its entertainment platform attributes.
However, Magic Eden’s transformation faces multiple obstacles. On one hand, the shrinking NFT market has led to a significant decline in its core user base, with active users dropping sharply in 2025. On the other hand, competition in the crypto entertainment sector is fierce, and Magic Eden’s innovative initiatives have yet to establish effective barriers to entry.
A deeper issue is that Magic Eden’s original business model lacks sustainability. It relied heavily on transaction fee commissions, but as NFT trading volume collapsed, this revenue source shrank severely. According to nftpulse data, as of writing, Magic Eden’s annual trading volume over the past year was about $503 million, with total market revenue only around $8.6 million. Although the company attempted to attract investors through staking rewards of the ME token (such as USDC dividends), in the bear market winter, the token economy system struggled to sustain itself.
Conclusion
User attrition and sharply declining revenue have forced Magic Eden to make a tough decision in early 2026: withdraw from Bitcoin and Ethereum EVM markets, focus on its native Solana chain, and shift its business emphasis to token trading and entertainment products rather than NFTs. This decision is both an optimization of existing resources and a reluctant compromise in the face of the industry’s winter.
From a broader perspective, Magic Eden’s predicament is not an isolated case but a microcosm of the entire NFT industry. Its strategic contraction seems like the final chime of an era, inadvertently confirming the long-held industry claim that “NFTs are dead.”
According to Cointelegraph data, the total market cap of global NFTs has fallen below $1.5 billion, returning to pre-2021 industry explosion levels. In 2025, the number of circulating NFTs is expected to grow by 25% to nearly 1.3 billion, but total sales will decline by 37% year-over-year to $5.6 billion, with average prices dropping below $100. These figures ruthlessly reveal the current slump in the NFT market.
As the crypto bear market persists, market supply and demand are out of balance, and investors’ speculative interest in NFTs wanes. They now favor the “practical value” of crypto products. However, current NFT use cases—such as gaming items or social identities—are still immature.
Magic Eden’s transformation narrative prompts us to consider the ultimate fate of NFTs. Will they become speculative tools for “digital art” or value carriers integrated with the real economy? Are they short-term “businesses” relying on transaction fees, or long-term ecosystems built through token economies and scene integration? These questions remain unresolved, but one thing is certain: the future of the NFT industry will depend on the co-evolution of technology, scenarios, and user needs. Magic Eden’s strategic retreat may just be a footnote in this long process, and the true answer still awaits the collective efforts of industry participants and users.
