Magic Eden unveils Season 2 of ME token rewards

This is a segment from The Drop newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.

Crypto marketplace Magic Edens Season 2 campaign launched on Thursday to reward users for engaging with its platform.

Staking Magic Eden ME tokens; trading NFTs, Runes, Ordinals or coins; and linking your crypto wallets on Magic Eden will all help you climb the seasons leaderboard to ultimately earn rewards in a few months. Runes are fungible tokens on the bitcoin blockchain, and Ordinals are like NFTs, but on bitcoin.

Swapping tokens on Magic Eden will also help traders climb the leaderboard, according to a post from the firm. The post suggests the rewards for this season will consist of ME tokens again, like in Season 1.

This time, Magic Eden has said rewards are based on staking power and trading volume per user. Its also changed up the visual look of the season and has updated the look of its leaderboard.

Magic Edens Season 1 ended March 31 and resulted in a total of 10 million ME tokens being distributed to participants, currently worth about $8 million. Staking ME and completing quests in Season 1 granted users rewards.

Season 2s top participants are expected to receive rewards at the end of the season in mid-August.

“Long-term, were super bullish on NFTs,” Magic Eden CEO Jack Lu previously told Blockworks in an interview, adding that the company is profitable despite broader bearish sentiment in the crypto industry (Lu said Magic Eden made $70 million to $75 million in 2024).

Magic Eden still sees more success with Solana than Ethereum. On Thursday, daily Ethereum NFT volume from Magic Eden was around just $14,800, or 0.56% of the total ETH NFT volume traded. The trading platforms of OpenSea, Blur, and CryptoPunks are in the lead by volume, according to data from one Dune dashboard that filters out wash trading.

Magic Edens Solana roots make it a popular place to trade SOL-based NFTs, though. On March 31, it saw over $3 million in daily volume from Solana NFTs alone (it saw just $12,651 in ETH NFT volume that day).

OpenSea is one of Magic Eden‘s biggest competitors, because both marketplaces target new and seasoned traders and offer a range of NFT art, profile pictures and gaming assets. But Tensor is arguably Magic Eden’s biggest competitor when it comes to Solana NFT trading (though both will have to compete with OpenSea in that category soon, too).