The NFT sector, which has brought color to our lives with the abundance of liquidity in the markets, has recently lost its former popularity. Legal regulatory issues in the cryptocurrency market and numerous negative situations in the NFT market have caused significant losses for NFT investors. However, two data points that we will analyze in this article indicate that there is still hope for NFTs.
Volume Continues to Decline in the NFT Market
According to the weekly NFT transaction volume data shared on the data analysis platform Dune Analytics, the NFT market reached its highest transaction volume in January 2022. Only on OpenSea, the transaction volume exceeded $4 billion in a week. However, by the last week of August 2023, the transaction volume reached its lowest levels and this decline continues.
Another noteworthy development is the largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, losing its leadership position to Blur since November 2022. The airdrop events and features offered by Blur have encouraged NFT traders to prefer this marketplace. The introduction of Blur to users has revitalized the NFT market since October 2022, but this surge was short-lived.
As can be understood from this data, especially if a giant like OpenSea were to conduct a similar airdrop event to Blur, it could bring significant volume to the market and enable many new participants, including Web3 users, to engage in NFT transactions.
Record Surge in Mint Count
Despite the decline in transaction volume in the NFT market, another data from Dune Analytics shows a significant increase in NFT mint transactions, especially in August. This result leads to a different conclusion than the transaction volume data. Polygon has held the record for NFT mint count from October 2022 to the present. The main reasons for the preference of the Layer-2 network are its high transaction speed and low commission fees.
Furthermore, the collaborations made by the Polygon team have led to the ecosystem gaining attention on a wide scale. Coinbase’s Layer-2 network, Base, which was introduced to users in August, reached a significant NFT mint transaction count in the first week, but lost interest in the last week of August.
According to this data, despite the liquidity constraints in the market, Web3 users will continue to embrace the NFT culture. Especially as leading companies from the Web2 world such as Starbucks, Lufthansa, and Nike continue to establish their presence in Web3, adoption in this field will continue to increase significantly.
