The fall is spectacular. NFTs, these digital certificates of authenticity which were snapped up at record prices just a few months ago, are not at all as popular as they used to be. The data aggregated by the media The Block and published on July 30, 2022 show the extent of the phenomenon: sales of NFTs, all platforms combined, have fallen critically.
While a few months ago, the sale of a new collection of NFTs from Bored Ape Yacht Club had literally blocked the Ethereum blockchain, the tokens are now suffering from the “crypto winter”. And the trend seems set to last.
A market in crisis
« The crypto winter is the nickname given to the very difficult period that the market is currently going through. In addition to falling prices for months, the cryptocurrency sector has also had to face several impressive crashes: that of the Terra ecosystem, which took with it $50 billion, and the bankruptcies of Celsius and 3 Arrows. Capital.
Until June, however, the NFT sector had been rather spared from the phenomenon, as data from The Block show: sales were still high. The collapse in sales really took place in June. While sales were $3.9 billion in May, they were down to just $884 million a month later. OpenSea, the main NFT sales platform, is the only one that manages to come out on top, while the others have almost disappeared from the data. It’s simple: it’s been a year since sales figures have been so low for NFTs.
These are not the only data that show that the market is going through a difficult period. The NonFungible site, which collects data from several platforms, published its analysis for the 2nd quarter of 2022 on July 26, and its conclusions are also negative. He estimates that the market saw a 25% decline in sales value — a trend that could last for a while.
« It’s not just the total value of sales that’s gone down notes Non Fungible in its report. ” This is also the case for the number of buyers and sellers, and the number of sales. All the indicators are red: the number of active portfolios, profits and the average selling price. The only data in green is not really good news: the number of contracts has increased simply because there are more NFTs than a year ago, and the average duration of possession of an NFT has increased, because they are more difficult to resell.
As for the declines in sales, they can be largely explained by the fact that many NFT collections have lost their appeal since the beginning of the year, in favor of the better known ones. ” CryptoPunks, Meebits, and Bored Ape Yacht Club Now Make Up 30% of All Sales Volume ”, according to NonFungible. Since these three collections belong to a single entity, Yuga Labs, we are really witnessing a concentration of the market.
So, would this be the end of NFTs? After being incorrectly predicted once in 2021 and then again in May 2022, the demise of NFTs has never seemed so close. However, you should not immediately bury the non fungible tokens : While the speculative market may be coming to an end, there are still uses for the technology, notably through the Ethereum Name Service, and through some metaverse projects.
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