Culture
NFT trading on OpenSea has basically fallen off a cliff
99%
The drop in NFT trading on OpenSea between a high point in May and a low point in August.
It may be time to shelf that NFT project you’ve been chewing on. According to an analysis of the trading volume of OpenSea — the most prominent marketplace for NFT minting and exchange — demand for NFTs has hit a new low from its peak in May.
The analysis, done by DappRadar, shows that trading volume on OpenSea fell by 99 percent over the course of about three months. As noted by Fortune, on May 1 the platform achieved a record $2.7 billion worth of transactions, juxtaposed against last Sunday’s activity, where $9.34 million worth of NFT trading occurred.
It’s worth pointing out that this comparison highlights specific days as opposed to averages. OpenSea also reached out to Fortune, which originally published the data, to note that the methodology used in the analysis didn’t account for “cryptocurrency’s price fluctuations.” The amount of active users on the platform between the two dates had fallen by about 33 percent as well.
Not just an anomaly— Normally a sample size as small as the one would be indicative of a bad faith argument, but in this case, the data is representative of the broader shift in the crypto space.
Take a look at the floor pricing (the lowest price one can get a given NFT for) of the market’s most notable bluechip NFT collection, the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). Last August, BAYC’s floor price sat at 25 ETH and steadily grew throughout the year before hitting highs of 118 ETH in January of this year, and 153 ETH in April. Ever since that all-time high, however, BAYC has steadily declined, reaching a low of about 67 ETH last Tuesday, according to Coingecko.
Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow, the founders of BAYC, recently went on the Nelk Boys’ podcast, and aside from talking about how their brainchild came to be, espoused the virtues of NFTs, noting they had barely scratched the surface that the technology has to offer.
With the novelty worn off, it’ll be up to evangelists to pivot people’s perception of NFTs’ value, whether through niche IP-use in shows and movies or brick-and-mortar locations. With the precipitous drop in interest, however, it’s looking like an uphill fight.