Magic Eden

Magic Eden is a digital asset trading platform that began as a marketplace for buying, selling, and minting non-fungible tokens on the Solana blockchain. Founded in September 2021, it captured over 90% of Solana NFT trading volume within months. Today, it is one of the most recognized names in on-chain trading, though its strategic direction has shifted significantly since then.

The platform was built by four co-founders: Jack Lu, Zhuoxun Yin, Sidney Zhang, and Zhoujie Zhou. Jack Lu is CEO and previously worked at Google and FTX before starting Magic Eden. Their core thesis was simple: the NFT market needed a fast, affordable alternative to Ethereum-based platforms like OpenSea, and Solana’s low transaction fees made that possible.

Magic Eden’s primary purpose is to give collectors and creators a place to trade digital assets without high gas fees or slow confirmation times. Think of it as a stock exchange for digital collectibles where anyone with a crypto wallet can participate. The platform runs a launchpad for new NFT projects, a secondary marketplace for trading existing collections, and recently added a token trading interface after its April 2025 acquisition of Slingshot Finance. This integration gave Magic Eden support for trading over 5 million tokens across more than 10 blockchains.

The company raised $157 million in total venture funding, including a $130 million Series B in June 2022 that valued it at $1.6 billion. That round closed during a crypto bear market, making the valuation even more notable. The platform earned the confidence of some of the most respected venture capital firms.

Early investors in Magic Eden included Paradigm, Sequoia Capital, Greylock, Electric Capital, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The Series A was led by Paradigm and included contributions from Sequoia and Solana Ventures. These names carry weight in both traditional tech and crypto investing, showing how seriously the industry took Magic Eden’s early traction.

Growth accelerated quickly after the funding rounds. When the Ordinals protocol for Bitcoin NFTs launched in early 2023, Magic Eden became an early winner in the ecosystem. By mid-2024, the platform surpassed Blur and OpenSea to become the top NFT marketplace globally by monthly trading volume, recording $734 million in March 2024 alone. At its peak, the platform commanded roughly 80% of all Bitcoin Ordinals and Runes trading volume, with Bitcoin-native assets accounting for 70% of its total marketplace activity.

That dominance did not last. Magic Eden will close its Bitcoin and EVM marketplaces and focus on Solana NFTs, pivoting toward crypto entertainment including prediction markets. CEO Jack Lu described this new direction as “crypto entertainment,” anchored by Dicey, a new iGaming platform. The company is narrowing its focus to double down on what its community uses most.

Magic Eden launched its native $ME token on December 10, 2024, following an airdrop to historical users. It is managed by the ME Foundation and serves as the governance and incentive layer for the platform. The total supply is fixed at 1 billion $ME tokens, distributed over four years. Over half the supply is reserved for community rewards and ecosystem development.

The $ME token serves four functions on the platform. Token holders can participate in governance decisions on platform updates or community policies, use the token for trading fee discounts and exclusive access to features or NFT collections, and earn $ME as incentives for trading activity and campaign engagement. Staking is the fourth use case. Starting February 1, 2026, 15% of platform revenue goes to the $ME ecosystem, with half for open-market buybacks and half distributed as USDC rewards to stakers. If you hold and stake $ME, you earn a share of the platform’s actual revenue, not just token emissions.

$ME trades on major centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, making it accessible for most buyers. If you want to buy Magic Eden tokens OTC in larger quantities or acquire locked tokens or SAFT notes, Acquire.Fi’s OTC and Secondaries Marketplace is built for that purpose.

Acquire.Fi lets you buy or sell Magic Eden tokens OTC directly through its marketplace. As a buyer, you can browse existing sell listings and engage with one that matches your target price and token amount. If you do not find what you want, you can submit a new Buy listing with your preferred valuation and token amount, and Acquire.Fi will work to match you with a suitable seller.

Sellers work the same way. You can engage with an existing Buy listing if the terms align with your position or submit a new Sell listing with your asking price and amount to offload. This gives you control over the terms rather than selling into exchange order books at whatever the market will bear.

Once a listing is submitted, Acquire.Fi handles coordination. The team conducts background checks, sends non-disclosure agreements, and introduces the buyer and seller. From there, both parties handle their own due diligence and payment settlement. Acquire.Fi is not a broker-dealer but actively assists throughout the process to help both sides close.