How Magic Eden captured 95% of the Solana NFT market with RudderStack

In crypto and NFTs, speed determines who wins and who disappears. Markets can shift overnight, new projects can take off in hours, and customer behavior changes in real time. In this environment, having a deep understanding of customers is absolutely critical for growing a business.

That’s why Magic Eden, one of the fastest-growing NFT marketplaces in Web3, didn’t wait months to get insights into user behavior. They moved fast, and made visibility a core part of their competitive strategy from day one.

Deploying customer data infrastructure at crypto speed

Just days after their initial launch, Magic Eden implemented RudderStack. In under 24 hours, the platform was live. And within just 30 minutes, behavioral event data was flowing from user sessions into a Databricks-powered data lake built on Amazon S3.

That velocity is nearly unheard of in traditional data infrastructure setups—especially for high-scale digital platforms. But Magic Eden isn’t typical. They needed infrastructure that could move at the pace of Web3.

With RudderStack, they got it.

Why Magic Eden chose RudderStack over Segment for Web3 data control

Magic Eden initially considered Segment, but quickly ruled it out. In the fast-moving world of crypto, data sovereignty and user privacy aren’t just concerns. They’re existential. Segment’s approach of storing data in its own cloud presented unacceptable risk.

Magic Eden needed full control over how user data was captured, managed, and routed—all while ensuring compliance with the unique privacy requirements of Web3 ecosystems. RudderStack offered the flexibility they needed to build on their own terms.

Unlike black-box SaaS tools, RudderStack is built for developers. Magic Eden’s engineering team could define exactly how wallet addresses and session IDs were tracked, stitch them together using custom identity logic, and enforce strict boundaries to protect sensitive data.

With RudderStack’s API-first and open-source approach, they didn’t have to bend their architecture to fit a rigid tool. They got a system that adapted to them instead of the other way around.

Using RudderStack to power a lakehouse-centric Web3 stack

Magic Eden runs on a modern, NoSQL architecture optimized for both structured and unstructured data. This made it essential to collect raw events in a format that wouldn’t require additional cleanup or ETL before analysis.

By using RudderStack to stream event data directly into Amazon S3 and Databricks in real time, Magic Eden eliminated a common bottleneck in the analytics pipeline. Instead of wasting days cleaning and reshaping data, analysts and engineers could run queries immediately and start extracting insights.

This setup enabled them to answer critical questions within hours:

• Where are users dropping off during wallet connection flows?
• Which referral sources drive the most high-value NFT purchases?
• How do Launchpad engagement patterns change across different drops?

From a single data point to full behavioral visibility

Before RudderStack, Magic Eden’s analytics capabilities were limited to basic page views, and that was the extent of the visibility they had. Post-deployment, the team began tracking more than 30 distinct user events, including:

• Wallet connections
• Launchpad clicks
• NFT bids and purchases
• Collection views
• Referral and affiliate sources
• User retention cohorts

This expanded visibility gave Magic Eden the insights needed to iterate on product experiences rapidly and tailor offerings to different user cohorts. By analyzing how collectors behaved across drop types, they could optimize not just UX but also marketing and go-to-market strategies.

The impact of real-time data infrastructure on NFT marketplace growth

In just six months, Magic Eden captured 95% of the Solana NFT marketplace. This was achieved in part due to their ability to act faster and smarter than the competition.

Their analytics team now operates with full visibility into user behavior, up from just 25% before RudderStack. And by eliminating the need for hand-coded instrumentation pipelines and daily cleanup scripts, they save an estimated three days of engineering and data prep time every month.

That’s time reinvested into product development, experimentation, and scaling, which is exactly what a high-growth team needs to stay ahead in an unpredictable ecosystem.

Preparing for the next phase of Web3 with scalable data infrastructure

When Solana introduced Solana Pay, Magic Eden didn’t scramble to adapt their stack. Their infrastructure was already flexible and real-time ready. Adding new event types and data destinations took minutes, not weeks.

That’s the power of a true customer data infrastructure: it doesn’t just serve the business today. It grows and scales alongside the company, without friction or vendor lock-in.

RudderStack vs. traditional CDPs: Final takeaways from Magic Eden’s stack

Magic Eden chose RudderStack because they needed real customer data infrastructure, one that put privacy, speed, and control at the center. In Web3, those aren’t just technical requirements. They’re how you win.

Read the full case study or book a demo to learn more.