SuperRare is a curated marketplace for digital art on Ethereum. Artists need approval before they can mint there. On a first sale the artist keeps 85% and the SuperRare DAO Community Treasury takes 15%. On a resale the seller keeps 90% and the original artist gets a 10% royalty. Buyers pay a 3% marketplace fee on top of every price. The biggest recent change is Liquid Editions, launched on 5 March 2026. These are artworks issued as ERC-20 tokens that trade through liquidity pools instead of auctions or listings.
What is new in 2026
Liquid Editions (launched 5 March 2026)
SuperRare announced Liquid Editions on its Substack on 4 March 2026. It calls them "a generative art protocol for launching ERC-20 tokenized artworks." The key facts from that announcement and the help centre:
- Token standard: each edition is an ERC-20 token, not an ERC-721 NFT. Holdings are fungible and divisible.
- Supply: the March announcement gave a fixed supply of 1,000,000 tokens per edition. The help centre article dated 10 September 2026 says supply "is fixed at launch and may vary by project". Check each edition's details.
- Pricing: each token is paired with RARE in a liquidity pool, and its price is quoted in RARE.
- Launch modes: Instant opens trading right away from a RARE pool seeded on both sides. Auction runs a fair-launch auction to set the first distribution and clearing price, after which the edition moves to continuous trading.
- How it trades: through liquidity mechanics, not auctions or listings. The help centre warns that a transaction can fail if the price moves past your slippage setting before it confirms.
- Who can launch: whitelisted SuperRare artists use a guided create flow. Whitelisted artists and independent builders can also use the Rare Protocol CLI.
The first edition was "Value Discovery" by the artist ripe, released on 5 March 2026 (Bankless, 3 March 2026). It used two liquidity pools for one token, each with a different fee tier. An on-chain renderer reads the price gap between the pools and draws a degraded, shifting dollar bill. That is the core idea of the format: the artwork is computed from its own market activity.
SuperRare Studio
SuperRare Studio is a separate product for building and hosting sites and apps, with optional links to SuperRare. According to its pricing page:
- Free: a Studio-hosted URL, selling through SuperRare Connect, standard analytics, and no cap on the number of apps during the beta.
- Pro (19 USDC a month): custom domains, more detailed analytics, a personal launch review and faster support.
How SuperRare works
Curation and Spaces
SuperRare started in April 2018. It was founded by John Crain, Charles Crain and Jonathan Perkins. Artists cannot mint without approval: they are admitted by the SuperRare team or through a Space.
Spaces arrived with the SuperRare 2.0 upgrade in August 2021. A Space is a curated storefront run by its own operating team, such as a gallery, a DAO or an artist collective. Each Space can launch its own ERC-721 minting contract and invite artists to mint with it. New Spaces are proposed to the DAO and approved by RARE holders.
Getting started
- Collectors: connect an Ethereum wallet. Your wallet address is your account, and you keep custody of what you buy. You can buy at a fixed price, bid in auctions or make offers.
- Artists: apply, wait for approval, then connect a wallet and mint. Minting and transactions also cost Ethereum gas. Gas goes to the network, not to SuperRare, and changes with congestion.
Fees and royalties
| Sale type | Artist / seller | DAO Community Treasury | Buyer pays on top |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary, standard | Artist 85% | 15% | 3% |
| Primary, Space artist | Split agreed with the Space operator | 5% | 3% |
| Secondary | Seller 90%, artist 10% royalty | n/a | 3% |
Source: SuperRare help centre, fee structure article published 16 January 2023.
Three points that are easy to miss:
- Royalties work only on SuperRare. The help centre says accepting offers through other marketplaces "can break the royalty automation". Royalties are generally not enforced elsewhere. The exceptions are V1 tokens minted before September 2019 and tokens minted under a custom Series Contract that the artist set up manually.
- Transfers are not sales. A gifted work earns the artist nothing until it is sold.
- Collectors earn royalties too. This applies to works collected on SuperRare from 13 July 2021 onward. The first collector in the chain earns 1% from a later sale, funded from the 3% fee, and the rate halves with each further transaction. These royalties are calculated monthly and credited in the dashboard. They are not yet on-chain, and the trades must happen on SuperRare's marketplace.
What does a SuperRare sale pay the seller?
Enter a sale price and pick the seller's share (85% on a standard first sale, 90% on a resale) to see what the artist or seller receives.
| Sale price, in the currency of the sale | Seller's share: 85 on a standard first sale (artist), 90 on a resale (seller) | Amount the artist or seller receives |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 85 % | 0.85 |
| 2 | 85 % | 1.7 |
| 2 | 90 % | 1.8 |
- The sale price is your own input, not a figure from any source.
- On a standard first sale the other 15% goes to the SuperRare DAO Community Treasury; on a resale the other 10% is the original artist's royalty.
- The buyer pays a 3% marketplace fee on top of the price, so it does not reduce the amount shown.
This covers only standard SuperRare marketplace sales: it leaves out Space artists' agreed splits, collector royalties, Ethereum gas, Liquid Editions pool trading, tax, and sales on other marketplaces where royalties are generally not enforced.
The RARE token
RARE is an ERC-20 token launched on 17 August 2021 together with SuperRare 2.0. Total supply is 1 billion. The largest allocations in SuperRare's token documentation:
- Retroactive airdrop: 150 million RARE (15%) to past artists and collectors.
- Community Treasury: 400 million (40%). A quarter vested at launch and the rest vests monthly over four years.
- Team: 255 million (25.5%).
RARE is used for DAO governance and as a currency for purchases and royalties on the marketplace. Since March 2026 it is also the reserve currency for Liquid Editions. Under SuperRare's governance rules, a proposal (SIP) needs a forum temperature check and a Council sponsor before a Snapshot vote. To pass it needs a quorum of 5,000,000 RARE and a 51% majority.
Security record: the July 2025 staking exploit
On 28 July 2025, an attacker drained about 11.9 million RARE, roughly $730,000 at the time, from SuperRare's RareStakingV1 contract. The cause was a broken access-control check in the updateMerkleRoot() function, which let anyone submit a Merkle root. The loss was confined to the staking contract's reward pool; the RARE token itself was not affected. Co-founder Jonathan Perkins told Cointelegraph that no core protocol funds were lost, that about 61 wallets were affected, and that those users would be made whole.
Checks before you buy
- Use the official SuperRare interface and check the contract address before you confirm. The help centre gives this advice for Liquid Editions in particular.
- Read a work's on-chain ownership history before a large purchase. Repeated transfers within a small group of wallets deserve a closer look.
- Never agree to finish a SuperRare sale off-platform or through a link someone sends you.
- For Liquid Editions, check pool depth and slippage. Price is set by the pool, not by a fixed list price.
