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In Part 1 of this series, we looked at open marketplaces and aggregators, platforms anyone can use, where primary and secondary sales happen without curation or gatekeeping, along with all definitions of terms important to navigate the NFT ecosystem.
This second article turns to curated marketplaces, which function much like digital galleries. Artists gain access only after passing a selection process, with the emphasis on quality and reputation rather than trading volume. For many, being listed on these platforms is a status marker — “SuperRare artist” has become a calling card across the space.
That exclusivity has its limits. Some artists feel the marketing support falls short: a homepage feature, a blog post, or the occasional exhibition can feel modest compared to expectations. Once accepted, artists usually mint directly, either on their own contracts or via the platform’s, though the trend is moving toward self-hosted contracts in line with Web3’s ethos.
Several curated marketplaces also extend into physical spaces, such as Fellowship’s gallery in London or SuperRare’s Offline Gallery in New York, further blurring the line between on-chain platforms and traditional galleries.
Note: This article covers curated marketplaces developed on-chain, not traditional galleries that simply release NFTs on third-party platforms. In Part 3, we’ll turn to thematic marketplaces that focus on niches like generative or AI art.
Mapping of Curated NFT Platforms:
Full Mapping Updated:
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See the full mapping summarized as a table that keeps on evolving >
Website: https://buildtree.io/
Chains: Multichain (Ethereum, Polygon, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Blast, Shape, Flow)
Established: 2023
Type: ✅Primary Sales, ✅Secondary Sales
Comment: Buildtree was created by NFT Studios to allow creators to work with no-code tools to build, launch, and showcase NFT projects with more complexity than other NFT launchpads. Buildtree is offering curated drops to highlight established artists using the platform.
Fun fact: Gauthier Zuppinger, active contributor and friend of 100 collectors, is head of partnerships and artist relationships at Buildtree. Curated drops include OG NFT artists, such as Bard Ionson and Sarah Zucker.
Website: expanded.art
Chains: Ethereum
Established: 2022
Type: ✅Primary Sales, ❌Secondary Sales
Comment: EXPANDED.ART offers digital and physical works, with a connection with new media art. Originally called misa art, it relaunched under a new name in 2022. EXPANDED.ART presents computer art pioneers and today's avant-garde as an online marketplace.
Fun fact: Curator Anika Meier has been a large part of the success of the platform that pairs with a physical space in Berlin.
Website: fellowship.xyz
Chains: Ethereum
Established: 2021
Type: ✅ Primary Sales, ❌ Secondary Sales
Comment: Originally known as the leading platform for photography, Fellowship has expanded its focus to high-end drops from digital artists across digital genres. With both online exhibitions and a physical showroom in London, it positions itself closer to a contemporary gallery model than a marketplace.
Fun fact: daily.xyz that provided daily AI art drops now redirects to the Fellowship website. While they were kept separate with the same founder (Alejandro Cartagena and Fred Arnal), they are now the same.
Website: foundation.app
Chains: Ethereum
Established: 2021
Type: ✅ Primary Sales, ❌ Secondary Sales
Comment: Built around an artist-invite system, Foundation became known as the “mid-tier” platform for NFT artists, accessible but still with some gated process. Its community-driven approach encouraged artist-to-artist support, though some felt limited by its reliance on homepage visibility and occasional editorial features.
Fun fact: The platform still has some active sales but feels quite abandoned right now, also the last editorial is from 2023 and the last tweet last May…
Website: https://www.gazell.io
Chains: Ethereum
Established: 2021
Type: ✅ Primary Sales, ❌Secondary Sales
Comment: Gazell.io is the digital arm of Gazelli Art House in London. The platform offers curated digital art drops and a monthly Gazell.io Residency program, supporting artists experimenting with VR, AR, AI, and blockchain.
Fun fact: Gazell.io hosted early NFT exhibitions and sales by artists like Brendan Dawes and Casey Reas early on.
Website: https://www.k011.com
Chains: Ethereum
Established: 2023
Type: ✅ Primary Sales, ❌ Secondary Sales
Comment: Founded by Kate Vass as an on-chain studio for AI and generative art, K011 builds technical frameworks for minting and scaling algorithmic creativity. It embeds royalties and provenance directly at the protocol leve.
Fun fact: K011 is the digital extension of Kate Vass Galerie in Zurich, whose founder is a member of 100 Collectors. The gallery was one of the first European galleries to exhibit and present to the art world algorithmic artists like Kevin Abosch, Cryptopunks and Mario Klingemann.
Website: https://www.mintgolddust.com/
Chains: Ethereum
Established: 2021
Type: ✅Primary Sales, ❌Secondary Sales
Comment: Mint Gold Dust is a curated NFT platform and ecosystem focused on highlighting artist and collector voice while promoting quality over quantity. The platform offers a marketplace, a creative studio for NFT creators, and Whitelabel solutions for digital and physical NFTs.
Fun fact: Kelly LeValley Hunt, one of our dear 100 collectors members, is the founder and CEO of Mint Gold Dust where you can find historical gems like this work by Hackatao and this one by Martin Lukas Ostachowski.
Website: https://objkt.com/galleries/objkt
Chains: Tezos
Established: 2022
Type: ✅ Primary Sales, ✅ Secondary Sales (it’s on Objkt)
Comment: Objkt One is the curated gallery of Objkt, the leading Tezos marketplace. It focuses on high-quality drops selected by a curatorial team, while still enabling resales within the platform.
Fun fact: once a separate interface, Objkt One is now part of the galleries listed on Objkt.
Website: niftygateway.com
Chains: Ethereum
Established: 2018 (acquired by Gemini in 2019)
Type: ✅ Primary Sales, ✅ Secondary Sales
Comment: Among the first major NFT platforms to reach mainstream audiences, known for its high-profile “drops” with artists and brands. It still runs curated sales and maintains a secondary market, though activity is quieter. Nifty Gateway’s rise was fueled by a handful of high-profile, blockbuster drops.
Fun fact: While it does offer built-in secondary sales, many collectors move their works off-platform to resell on higher-traffic marketplaces like Opensea.
Website: scorpioscollect.art
Chains: Ethereum
Established: 2023
Type: ✅ Primary Sales, ❌ Secondary Sales
Comment: A newer entrant that mixes curated NFT art collections (Krista Kim, Agoria, Refik Anadol, Operator) with live performances at the Scorpios cultural venues in Greece and Turkey. It’s designed as a lifestyle-oriented space where digital art collecting intersects with hospitality and live events.
Fun fact: The gallery managing the NFT art drops is HOFA London.
Website: scarce.city
Chains: Bitcoin
Established: 2020
Type: ✅ Primary Sales, ✅ Secondary Sales
Comment: Scarce City is a Bitcoin-native auction house and marketplace specializing in digital and physical Bitcoin art. Using the Lightning Network for payments and escrow, it pioneered a “proof-of-burn” system to prevent spam bidding. Scarce City has hosted auctions for everything from Rare Pepes to physical Bitcoin-inspired works, and more recently expanded into Ordinals trading.
Fun fact: It is one of the longest-running and most recognizable venues for Bitcoin art, blending meme culture, digital scarcity and art collecting.
Website: sovrn.art
Chains: Ethereum
Established: 2021
Access: Curated Marketplace
Type: ✅Primary Sales, ❌Secondary Sales
Comment: Sovrn is a curated launchpad and studio for digital art. It focuses on limited, high-concept drops. Sovrn emphasizes narrative and experimentation rather than high trading volume, positioning itself closer to a gallery model than an open marketplace.
Fun fact: It was co-founded by 100 collectors member and artist Pindar Van Arman and Ezra Shibboleth.
Website: superrare.com
Chains: Ethereum
Established: 2018
Type: ✅ Primary Sales, ✅ Secondary Sales
Comment: The most established curated marketplace for art NFTs. While artists sometimes wish for broader marketing reach, SuperRare maintains strong community recognition and operates the Offline Gallery in New York.
Fun fact: They also work on decentralized tools via the RareDAO and the $RARE token, along with a new partnership with Transient Labs.
Website: https://www.taex.com
Chains: Ethereum
Established: 2021
Type: ✅ Primary Sales, ❌ Secondary Sales
Comment: TAEX (The Art Exchange) is a curated digital marketplace that showcases and co-produces works by leading artists, such as Marina Abramovic, Sasha Stiles, .
Fun fact: 100 collectors organized a cocktail with TAEX in Madrid for ARCOMadrid last year.
Website: verse.works
Chains: Ethereum
Established: 2022
Type: ✅ Primary Sales, ✅ Secondary Sales
Comment: Exhibition-focused platform that invites artists and curators to present projects in a classical exhibition format. Works more like a rotating online gallery than a trading hub, offering collectors a curated entry point into digital art conversations.
Fun fact: It just held its first curated secondary sale / auction, competing with traditional auction houses (without buyers premium and with artist royalties) the same week Christie’s shut down their digital art department.
Website: https://www.zardoz.club
Chains: Ethereum
Established: 2020
Type: ✅ Primary Sales, ❌ Secondary Sales
Comment: The zardoz.club gallery represents and supports artists whose contemporary practices intersect with the digital world, whether conceptually, aesthetically, or technically.
Fun fact: Founded by collector and curator Tales Tommasini, Zardoz has two sides: a gallery supporting artists and his private collection.
In the following article, we'll cover the thematic (often curated) marketplaces that focus on one specific genre, such as AI art, generative art or poetry.
Examples:
Many of the above mentioned curated marketplaces also opened a physical space, blurring the lines between a marketplace and a gallery that sells digital art minted on other platforms or by the artists.
In this article, please note that we focused on the platform side of things. We'll cover galleries with a physical footprint (and oftentimes no attached marketplaces) in a following article.
Here are some commercial galleries where you can walk to and find digital art:
Let us know if you know of other marketplaces (active or not) to improve this mapping in progress or if there is anything to correct. This is a living work in progress.
See you soon for part 3 (thematic marketplaces).