Magic Eden

Magic Eden is an NFT marketplace on Solana where collectors buy, sell and bid on NFTs, and where creators launch new collections through its Launchpad. It charges no listing fee and takes 2% on each completed trade. Founded in September 2021, it spent 2023 to early 2026 expanding to Bitcoin Ordinals and EVM chains, then closed those marketplaces in March 2026 and became a Solana-only marketplace again. Alongside the marketplace it runs Packs, Lucky Buy and a separate crypto casino and sportsbook, Dicey. Its governance token, $ME, is a Solana SPL token. Magic Eden's operating company is Euclid Labs.

How does Magic Eden work?

Magic Eden is a peer-to-peer order book for NFTs. Sellers list at a fixed price or sell into open bids. Buyers purchase listed items or place item, trait or collection offers, and trades settle on-chain through Magic Eden's Solana marketplace program. Assets stay in the user's own wallet until a sale executes.

For bidders, Magic Eden offers an escrow wallet: one pool of SOL that can back up to 100 offers at once. If the balance can no longer cover an offer, that offer drops off the order book until the user tops it up. Magic Eden says escrow funds remain in the user's sole custody and can be withdrawn at any time.

The marketplace supports Metaplex NFTs, Metaplex Core, Token-2022, compressed NFTs (cNFTs), Solana inscriptions and SPL tokens in one interface. It covers PFP collections, gaming items, art and tokenized trading cards. Bulk listing, trait-filtered sweeps, rarity rankings, floor-price warnings and AMM pools for NFT liquidity are built in.

What are Magic Eden's fees and royalties?

Per its help centre (updated March 2026), Magic Eden charges:

• Listing: 0%.
• Marketplace fee: 2% on every transaction.
• Creator royalties: optional on its Solana marketplace unless the collection enforces them in its metadata. The buyer chooses whether to honour the royalty the creator set, and royalties are paid to the creator straight after the sale.

Solana network fees come on top but are a fraction of a cent per transaction.

Magic Eden Launchpad for NFT creators

The Launchpad is the creator side of the business. Projects apply to mint through Magic Eden and get minting infrastructure, allowlist management, multi-phase mints and homepage placement in front of the marketplace's buyers. Collections that launched there include Mad Lads, DeGods and Claynosaurz. The Creator Hub also lets existing collections list on the marketplace and manage their metadata. Our Breakpoint 2024 Magic Eden keynote summary covers the product direction the team set out at the time.

Magic Eden Packs and Lucky Buy

Two gamified products sit beside the order book, and both stayed live after the March 2026 shutdowns:

• Packs. Users pay a fixed price to open randomised NFT bundles. Tiers such as SOL Platinum were featured on the homepage in October 2026.
• Lucky Buy. Users commit a percentage of a listed NFT's price in exchange for a matching probability of winning it. If you don't win, the SOL you committed is spent. Lucky Buy is Solana-only, isn't available for cNFTs or SPL listings, and Magic Eden's guide says it is intended for non-US users only.

Is Magic Eden still multichain? The 2026 return to Solana

No. Between 2023 and 2025 Magic Eden added Bitcoin Ordinals and Runes, Ethereum and other EVM chains, plus a multichain wallet. In February 2026 it reversed course, and its service-changes notice set out the dates:

• 9 March 2026: EVM and Bitcoin marketplace support ended. The Solana Marketplace, Packs and Lucky Buy continued.
• 27 March 2026: Bitcoin and Runes APIs and the remaining Bitcoin services shut down. BTC bidding and auction wallets had to be emptied by this date.
• 1 April 2026: the Magic Eden Wallet was pulled from the app stores. Existing installs could still export private keys.
• 1 May 2026: the wallet was fully shut down.

The developer docs now label the EVM API as deprecated. CEO Jack Lu linked the pivot to cost: most operating spend went on non-Solana products while Solana produced most of the volume. Decrypt reported that February 2026 platform volume was $576 million, mostly from Solana NFTs.

Dicey: Magic Eden's casino and sportsbook

Dicey is a crypto casino and sportsbook that settles on Solana. According to Decrypt, its two-month closed beta from late December 2025 had about 200 users wager more than $15 million. Magic Eden now describes its direction as "the intersection of finance and entertainment", and by autumn 2026 much of the main @MagicEden X account's posting promoted Dicey. Dicey is a separate gambling product with its own terms. It is not part of the NFT marketplace.

$ME token: staking, buybacks and governance

Magic Eden launched $ME (ME) on 10 December 2024. Supply is fixed at 1 billion tokens, released over four years:

• Community: 50.2%, made up of 12.5% for the initial claim and 37.7% for a longer-term community and ecosystem reserve.
• Contributors: 26.2%, with an 18-month lockup after launch.
• Investors and advisors: 23.6%.

Revenue share. From 1 February 2026, 15% of all Magic Eden revenue goes to the $ME ecosystem. Half funds open-market $ME buybacks. The other half is paid to stakers as USDC, weighted by staking power, which combines the amount staked and the lock length. Rewards are claimable monthly and are forfeited if not claimed within 90 days. This replaced the earlier marketplace-only buyback, including the previously announced plan to put 30% of revenue from Swaps, Lucky Buy and Packs into $ME and NFT buybacks.

Governance. According to the rewards guide, staking $ME gives voting power equal to staking power. Holders use it to vote on-chain on proposals that are first discussed on a Discourse forum.

Product role. Magic Eden's March 2026 notice says $ME "remains an important part" of the ecosystem, but that the company's focus is on Dicey and more detail on how $ME fits the roadmap will come later.

Decrypt reported in February 2026 that $ME was down about 97% from its December 2024 peak of $5.63. The token widget on this page shows the current price.

Who is Magic Eden for?

• Solana NFT collectors and casual buyers. Magic Eden suits them best. It has a curated homepage, wide inventory, simple checkout and a help centre aimed at beginners. The constraint is that it is now Solana-only. If you collect Ordinals or Ethereum NFTs, you need a different marketplace.
• Creators launching a Solana collection. They get distribution and minting tooling through the Launchpad. Royalties are optional for buyers unless the collection enforces them.
• High-frequency traders. Escrow-backed bidding and sweeps cover the basics, but many professional Solana NFT traders also use Tensor TNSR$0.033+4.6%, which is built around trading tools.
• $ME holders. Staking earns a USDC share of platform revenue, but that income depends on Magic Eden's revenue and comes with lockups.

Is Magic Eden safe? Risks and security

Custody and contracts. On Solana, listed NFTs stay in your wallet and escrow funds stay under your control, so Magic Eden doesn't pool user assets. The trade-off is that you rely on its on-chain programs. The main marketplace program, Magic Eden V2 (M2mx93ekt1fmXSVkTrUL9xVFHkmME8HTUi5Cyc5aF7K), is upgradeable. Its upgrade authority is a single address (9GWPeu3cBfkGSEit6HMaAFKswoirxqgMqykMh7RVH2Bb), and we could not confirm whether that address is a multisig. In practice the company can change the program's code. We found no public audit report for this program version.

The September 2026 legacy-approval exploit. On 24-25 September 2026, attackers exploited Limit Break's Payment Processor V2, a third-party contract Magic Eden had used to settle EVM trades between roughly February and October 2024. NFTs listed on Magic Eden's EVM marketplace in that window still had "approve for all" permissions granted to the contract.

• Stolen: NFTs including Meebits, Otherdeeds and Desperate ApeWives were taken, and The Block reported that about 660 WETH was not recovered.
• Rescued: a whitehat rescue moved 23,155 at-risk NFTs, worth roughly $5.7 million.
• What Magic Eden said: in its statement, Magic Eden said no live listings were affected. It told former EVM users to revoke the Payment Processor V2 approval on Ethereum, Polygon and Base.

Solana listings were not involved. The lesson is broader, though: approvals you granted to a marketplace stay live after you stop using it.

Legal. In June 2026, $ME buyers filed a proposed class action, Pagan v. Lu, in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The defendants are Euclid Labs, the ME Foundation and the four co-founders. The suit alleges that $ME's promised utility (multichain trading, governance, staking and revenue share) arrived late, changed or never launched.

In September 2026 the court dismissed the claims against Euclid Labs, citing the class-action waiver in the wallet's terms, and against co-founder Zhuoxun Yin, for lack of personal jurisdiction. Claims against the other defendants, including CEO Jack Lu, remain at the pleading stage.

Business concentration. Solana NFT volume is far below its 2021-2022 peak, and the company's growth bet has moved to gambling with Dicey. Marketplace users should expect the product to keep changing, and Lucky Buy, Packs and Dicey are games of chance.

Magic Eden vs Tensor and other alternatives

Tensor TNSR$0.033+4.6% is Magic Eden's main Solana rival. Many collections list on both, and Magic Eden's own X posts link mints to both marketplaces.

• Magic Eden is broader and more consumer-facing. It has a curated discovery feed, a creator Launchpad, Packs and Lucky Buy.
• Tensor is built for active traders, with pro-style charts, fast bidding and bulk tools.

For a first purchase or a new launch, Magic Eden is the simpler starting point. Heavy flippers tend to use Tensor, or both. For Bitcoin Ordinals or Ethereum NFTs, Magic Eden no longer applies, and Ordinals-native or EVM marketplaces are the alternatives.

Magic Eden team, funding and history

Magic Eden was founded in September 2021 by Jack Lu (CEO, formerly at Boston Consulting Group and Google), Sidney Zhang (CTO), Zhuoxun Yin (COO, formerly at Bain, dYdX and Coinbase) and Zhuojie Zhou (Chief Engineer, formerly at Facebook and Checkr). Within months of launch it was the default Solana NFT venue.

It raised about $157 million in total. That includes a $130 million Series B in June 2022, led by Greylock Partners and Electric Capital at a $1.6 billion valuation, with Paradigm, Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners also investing.

During the 2024 Ordinals boom it controlled most Bitcoin Ordinals trading. In March 2024 it briefly became the highest-volume NFT marketplace across all chains, at $734 million in monthly volume. It launched $ME in December 2024, closed its non-Solana products in March-May 2026, and is now Solana NFTs plus Dicey.