Magic Eden unveils ME token, eyeing expansion beyond NFT sector

The NFT marketplace is also planning a pivot to fungible token trading

article-image

Magic Eden and Adobe Stock modified by Blockworks

share

ME Foundation, the entity behind the NFT marketplace Magic Eden, announced the launch of its token ME on Thursday. 

Magic Eden joins a slew of other NFT marketplaces like Blur, LooksRare, X2Y2, Tensor and Sudoswap in launching a token. OpenSea is now the last major holdout in that group.

ME will be claimable via the Magic Eden wallet on mobile and desktop, while details around its supply and distribution will be announced at a later date. US users will not be able to claim ME.  

Magic Eden launched as a NFT trading platform for Solana in 2021, later expanding to Polygon and Base. 

The marketplace saw a significant jump in activity after it integrated Bitcoin NFTs during the Ordinals and Runes hype earlier this year. Since then, Magic Eden’s processed about 80% of all Bitcoin NFT secondary trading volume in the last year, according to NFT Pulse.

Across all chains in the same time period, Magic Eden processed about $2.9 billion (24%) of NFT trading volumes in total.

Amid a depressed NFT market, Magic Eden seems to be pursuing a mobile-centric strategy to pivot beyond NFT trading to enable cross-chain trading of fungible crypto tokens like bitcoin and ether.

Magic Eden’s token announcement comes off the back of its mobile app launch for the marketplace’s native wallet Wednesday, which has at least 250,000 monthly active users. 

The ME token aims to attract users from outside the Magic Eden ecosystem to adopt its open source protocols and token, while also to “incentivize users to trade any asset on the biggest chains at any time,” the official press release said.

The total NFT market cap today sits around $42 billion, still far below its all-time high of $617 billion in May 2022, according to Coinmarketcap.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template (10).png

Research

Innovations on Aptos’ technical design through Raptr, Shardines, and Zaptos approach near-optimal latency and throughput by unlocking 100% utilization of network resources, with the capacity to settle 260k transactions per second with latencies less than 800ms. The original Move language was revamped with the launch of Move 2, supporting more expressivity in smart contract logic and a scalable ability to interact with high volume datasets. The ecosystem has benefitted from strong asset inflows, now hosting over $1.3B in stablecoins, $450M in bridged BTC, and $530M in RWAs. Activity in the Aptos ecosystem has grown notably over the past year, with monthly application revenue reaching ~$835k and monthly DEX volumes growing to over $5B, both at new all time highs.

article-image

Sam Altman sees our future through the World Orb

article-image

Few US politicians are this clearheaded about Bitcoin

article-image

Pump.fun seemed to kick off buybacks on Tuesday according to onchain analysis

article-image

Stablecoins are a new form of money, with an old kind of limit

article-image

Firedancer has yet to go fully live, but its progress has been “pretty impressive,” a dev said

article-image

House lawmakers support, criticize the GENIUS Act, CLARITY Act and the Anti-CBDC Surveillance Act in Monday hearing