NFT Sales Near $2 Billion in March as Blur Dominates Market

NFT

The NFT market surged in February, topping $2 billion in whole buying and selling quantity per knowledge from DappRadar—a 117% improve from the earlier month. And that momentum remained almost intact into March, with knowledge displaying solely a slight dip to below $2 billion.

Market-wide knowledge from DappRadar, supplemented with further on-chain knowledge from Dune, factors to only over $1.95 billion value of buying and selling quantity in March, down about 4% from the February whole of $2.04 billion.

The overwhelming majority of that buying and selling quantity once more got here from Blur, with almost $1.35 billion value of Ethereum NFT trades on {the marketplace}, up barely from about $1.32 billion in February. Blur buying and selling exercise surged in mid-February when {the marketplace} launched its BLUR reward token, which has incentivized mass flipping from “whale” merchants—that’s, merchants who maintain giant positions in a given assortment and act as so-called market makers.

NFT Gross sales Surge to $2 Billion in February—Highest Since Terra Crash

The surge in buying and selling quantity, and the ensuing increase in total NFT market gross sales, has raised questions over whether or not such buying and selling exercise must be categorized as “manipulated” and even “wash buying and selling,” as knowledge platform CryptoSlam has finished. DappRadar counts it as professional buying and selling, nonetheless, and the pattern has continued with extra token rewards promised for customers.

OpenSea, nonetheless the main NFT market when it comes to whole distinctive wallets, logged about $424 million value of buying and selling quantity in March, down from $587 million in February. General, Ethereum NFT buying and selling was almost even in March—from $1.81 billion in February to $1.82 billion.

Together with the slight dip in whole March buying and selling quantity, fewer NFTs have been additionally bought in comparison with February. Information from DappRadar and Dune collectively level to about 5.8 million whole NFTs bought in March in comparison with virtually 6.5 million NFTs in February. Regardless of February’s huge surge in buying and selling quantity, much more NFTs (over 6.6 million) have been bought in January.

How A lot Wash Buying and selling Is Actually Taking place on Blur?

February’s $2.04 billion tally was the biggest month-to-month whole for NFT buying and selling quantity since Could 2022, when the market sank amid the collapse of Terra’s crypto ecosystem.

However with a lot quantity nonetheless tied to Blur’s rewards scheme, which is dominated by a small variety of whale merchants, it’s debatable whether or not the current rise in NFT market gross sales is de facto “natural”—not to mention sustainable, ought to the attract of token incentives fade.