Rarible (RARI) What You Need To Know | Deep Dive

Review Date: April 13, 2021

We can probably chalk it up to the recent sale of an NFT work by digital artist Beeple for nearly $70 million, but NFTs are having a moment in the sun lately. Rarible has been serving the space since early 2020, and seems well-positioned to benefit from this latest surge of interest in this particular arena.

NFTs (that’s “nonfungible tokens”) are units of data stored on a blockchain such that they represent ownership of a unique, non-interchangeable digital item. Users can easily view copies of an NFT, but ownership is limited to the buyer, and that chain of custody is tracked on the blockchain. NFTs might track anything from ownership of digital art to who owns a particular outfit for their character in a video game.

Rarible is a noncustodial marketplace that lets users purchase NFT art pieces using Ethereum, founded well in advance of the latest NFT hype by Ilya Komolkin, Alexei Falin, and Alexander Salnikov. While information on the founders is quite limited, the fact that the platform effectively offers intellectual property rights to its users via proof of provenance makes it particularly compelling. Rarible has been paying attention to NFTs since before it was cool. Here’s what you need to know about the company and its RARI token.

RARI tokenomics and use cases

RARI has a total supply of 25,000,000 coins, which suggests it will be deflationary in the long term, as a fixed token supply provides a theoretical floor for the value of the token. RARI cannot be directly purchased from Rarible, but is instead available through certain participation avenues. 10% of RARI’s total supply was scheduled to be airdropped to NFT collectors starting in July 2020. Of that sum, 2% of the total supply was allocated to Rarible users and 8% was allocated to all NFT holders.

The main use case for RARI is governance. Creators and users can vote on the various functions within Rarible, including system updates. RARI token holders get to vote on Rarible’s trading fees, its development, and new features to be implemented in its marketplace. We found no evidence of any token burns as of this writing, but proposals for token burns were uncovered on Rarible’s forum in September 2020.

Consensus mechanism

Rarible is built on the Ethereum network, and RARI belongs to the ERC-20 token standard family. The tokens created on the platform are minted using the ERC-721 non-fungible standard and are secured by the Rarible protocol.

Public awareness

According to similarweb.com, Rarible had a total of 1.68 million visits in February of 2021, with strong positive momentum in its site traffic since Q4 2020. According to CoinMarketCap, RARI is currently listed for trading on a number of exchanges, including Uniswap, Balancer, MXC, Sushiswap, BKEK, Poloniex, and many more. Those seeking the token won’t have to look hard to trade it.

Rarible’s website does not provide information on its founders or employees. Alexei Falin is affiliated with the Higher School of Economics and the University of Southern California. Before Rarible he co-founded Sticker. Place, a visual communication company. There have been articles written about Rarible in mainstream, non-crypto media outlets, like CNBC.

Rarible has also attracted attention from celebrities such as Mark Cuban, rappers Soulja Boy, Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park, and actress Linsey Lohan. Rarible currently has a presence on Medium, Twitter, Telegram, Youtube, Discord, Instagram, and Telegram. There are videos of team members Alex Salnikov, Masha Vyazemskaya, Xenia Vyazemskaya, and Ethan van Ballegooyen on YouTube discussing Rarible and NFTs.

The formal launch date for the company is unclear, but it is in the range of late January to early February 2020. A Medium post introducing RARI on July 15th, 2020 said that “during 6 months of existence, Rarible is proud to have built a strong community of creators, art lovers, and NFT believers.”

What about the technicals?

There is currently no white paper on RARI, but a July 15th, 2020 Medium post by Rarible states that: Our ultimate goal is to evolve towards a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), where all decision rights will belong to the platform users.

RARI token, awarded to the active users of the platform, will act as the governance instrument: it will enable collectors and creators to vote on multiple upgrades and decide how the platform should develop further. This makes the governance of the platform directly responsive to our most active users and brings Rarible closer to being a public good operated by the community members who value it most.

Is there a userbase?

Yes. According to DappRadar, users and unique active wallets increased to almost 12,000 and 15,000 during the last week of February 2021, respectively.

Who do they compete with?

Rarible has a number of competitors, including OpenSea, KnownOrigin, Nifty Gateway, Makers Place, Axie Marketplace, and more. According to a DappRadar article from October 2020, Rarible is the top NFT marketplace, accounting for 61% of trading volume. But if we were to judge Rarible by RARI’s market capitalization, it is only in the middle of the pack. Its capitalization of some $26 million is dwarfed by THETA’s $11.7 billion, as of April 4th, 2021.

In any case, those seeking exposure to the latest wave of NFT hype may choose to buy some RARI and use it to participate meaningfully on Rarible. The company is well-established within the space and is poised to grow as NFTs go more mainstream.

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