GlossaryBeginner
English Auction
The traditional ascending-price auction format, where bidding starts low and rises until the highest bidder wins.
An English auction is the traditional ascending-price auction format, where bidding starts at a low price and participants submit progressively higher bids until no one is willing to bid further, with the highest bidder winning.
This is the structural opposite of a Dutch auction (see Kaavon's "Dutch Auction" glossary definition), which instead starts high and descends — English auctions are the more familiar, commonly-used format for NFT sales specifically, where bidders compete openly against one another.
Examples
- An NFT sale structured as an English auction lets bidders see and respond to competing bids, with the highest bid ultimately winning.
- English auctions are the structural opposite of Dutch auctions, ascending in price rather than descending.