NFT Sales in 2022 Nearly Matched the 2021 Boom, Despite Market Crash

NFT

Regardless of months of declining gross sales and falling costs, total NFT gross sales quantity final yr practically matched the 2021 peak, in line with information from DappRadar. A buzzy begin to the NFT market in 2022 buoyed the year-end tally and helped make up for the a number of weaker months that adopted, the information suggests.

The NFT market generated round $24.7 billion price of natural buying and selling quantity in 2022 throughout blockchain platforms and marketplaces, DappRadar shared with Decrypt. That’s a slight dip from the $25.1 billion whole recorded in 2021 because the NFT market surged in exercise and curiosity as tokenized collectibles first turned greater than a distinct segment curiosity.

DappRadar’s “natural” information excludes trades which might be suspected to be wash trades, or trades which have been manipulated ultimately.

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Wash buying and selling typically happens when merchants promote their very own NFTs backwards and forwards between their managed wallets at inflated costs, typically in an try and sport a token rewards mannequin on a market. Billions of {dollars}’ price of wash buying and selling was excluded from the information, as seen at marketplaces like LooksRare and X2Y2, which provided token incentives for buying and selling.

Whereas total buying and selling quantity for the yr was largely flat, DappRadar recorded a significant surge within the variety of NFTs traded final yr. The analytics agency recorded about 101 million NFT trades over the course of 2022, in comparison with about 58.6 million NFT trades in 2021. In different phrases, extra NFTs had been traded at decrease USD values, given crumbling crypto and NFT costs.

NFTs in 2022

The crypto market misplaced important worth over the course of the yr, with losses accelerating in Might amid the collapse of Terra’s LUNA and UST. The so-called crypto winter was then exacerbated by the downfall of crypto alternate FTX and the ensuing trade contagion, impacting crypto costs additional.

The NFT market adopted the same development all year long. Gross sales surged in January as 2021’s momentum carried into the brand new yr, as high market OpenSea alone registered a report month with $5 billion in buying and selling quantity.

Buying and selling quantity dipped within the months thereafter, however then the large late April launch of NFT land plots for Yuga Labs’ Otherside—a Bored Ape Yacht Membership-themed metaverse sport—buoyed the market and drove OpenSea to a single-day report for buying and selling quantity. At that time, it regarded as if 2022 NFT gross sales quantity might handily high 2021’s tally.

That spike didn’t final, nevertheless. As crypto costs collapsed in Might, so too did NFT buying and selling momentum, with costs falling sharply because of this. Month-to-month quantity fell from practically $3.3 billion in Might to only over $1 billion in June, per DappRadar, however the market hasn’t topped the $1 billion mark within the months since.

The Greatest NFT Collections of 2022

Ethereum’s Bored Ape Yacht Membership was final yr’s top-selling NFT challenge, in line with information from CryptoSlam, with practically $1.6 billion price of buying and selling quantity. Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of that buying and selling befell between January and Might, as beginning costs fell from a late April peak of $429,000 price of ETH to a current low of underneath $60,000 in November.

December information

In comparison with the early-year heights, the NFT market ended 2022 with a relative whimper. However total buying and selling quantity ticked up barely over November’s tally, whereas the variety of NFTs offered within the last month of the yr rebounded after a dip the earlier month.

In line with DappRadar, the NFT market produced practically $684 million price of natural trades in December, up from an adjusted whole of over $662 million in November. About 6.7 million NFTs had been offered throughout the month, up from about 4.8 million in November and 6.1 million in October.

OpenSea remained the main market for natural NFT trades, notching over $297 million price in December, in line with DappRadar. That’s up from about $259 million in November. Blur, a more recent rival that has incentivized NFT trades with the promise of upcoming token rewards, jumped from about $115 million in November to nearly $177 million in December.

The Solana blockchain continued its current up-and-down sample, falling to just about $70 million from $95 million in November. It had beforehand dipped to $67 million in October after a sizzling September that noticed practically $134 million in NFT gross sales on the again of the launch of y00ts. The worth of SOL fell sharply in November and December because of the FTX collapse.

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In the meantime, Movement—the blockchain platform behind NBA Prime Shot and NFL All Day—stemmed the bleeding after two straight months of fifty% or better declines. Movement posted about $6.8 million in NFT gross sales in December, down from about $7.7 million in November.

And Prime Shot noticed its first small month-over-month achieve after months of declines, as much as $2.2 million in December (per CryptoSlam) after lower than $2.1 million of NFT gross sales in November. The FLOW token set a brand new all-time low value earlier this week after steadily dropping steam amid falling NFT exercise on the platform.