While the value of cryptocurrencies kept rising, the eagerly-awaited increase in the transaction volume of NFT trading occurred. As per Dune statistics, industry leader OpenSea has raised its transaction volume in Ethereum-based NFTs for the second consecutive month. In January 2022, OpenSea increased its trading volume for two straight months. In January 2023, the company replicated this feat.
In January, a cumulative of $368M worth of NFTs were sold on OpenSea as of January 26, 2023. This is the highest reported number since August 2023. ETH’s 33.5% increase since the start of 2023 contributed significantly to current heights. In contrast, the amount of NFT sales expressed in terms of ETH in December 2022 was 227,419, compared to 257,000 on January 26.
In January 2022, trade volume milestones for Ethereum NFTs on OpenSea were shattered in both USD and ETH terms. The trade volume in January 2022 was 1,604,546 ETH and 4,857,435,382 USD. The transaction volume decreased significantly in June 2022, and the industry is still not deemed to have revived.
Amongst some of the 15 most prominent Ethereum NFT series, Beanz has had the greatest growth in sales over the past month, at 157%. CryptoPunks led the transactional growth rate with 58%, although the count of Bored Ape Kennel Club NFT owners also climbed by 58%. BAYC and MAYC share the top two spots in terms of trading volume, while Sewer Pass unexpectedly ranks third.
The Sewer Pass is a set of NFTs that provide Bored Ape Yacht Club members entry to the forthcoming Dookey Dash online game. Because Yuga Labs restricts NFT markets such LooksRare and Blur, the collection’s NFTs are frequently exchanged on OpenSea. Yuga Labs has protested about the non-payment of creative royalties by NFT markets.
On the contrary, Yuga Labs, which has six out of ten collections with large trading volumes, is responsible for over 50% of all NFT transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. In the previous 30 days, Ethereum has sold $733M worth of NFTs, trailed by Solana, whose sales have surged by 82%. Cardano, ImmutableX, and Polygon correspondingly round up the top three positions. Notable is the 59% decline in Polygon NFT trading volume.
While there are a growing number of blockchains in the NFT industry, nothing can compete with Ethereum and Solana. Particularly, the volume of transactions in WAX is quite large, but the absence of prominent assets on the WAX network and the frequent trading of in-game goods exclude WAX from the 10 most popular NFT blockchains.
