- For the first time since June 2021, there are fewer than 4,000 Ethereum NFT traders every day.
- An extract from The Block’s Data and Insights newsletter is provided below.
This year has seen a lot of excitement in the larger cryptocurrency market, but the non-fungible trading industry is still lagging behind.
The news about NFTs has mostly been negative, with the exception of a few positive announcements like Adidas and Stepn’s partnership, which will start with an NFT collection, and the upcoming 2025 release of the Pudgy Penguins game, which is based on the team’s NFT collection and toy line, which sold a million units in less than a year.
The negative stories mostly highlight the NFT space’s falling activity and valuations. Starbucks terminated its Odyssey Beta NFT program, and no one wanted to purchase the Coachella NFT VIP passes. Before his criminal trial began, trading traffic for the original Donald Trump NFT collection was falling, and the Bored Ape that Kevin Hart once owned went for 83% less than what he paid for it.
While some collections attract media attention, it has generally been observed that most collections—including the most anticipated NFT subcategory of the year, Bitcoin Ordinals—have suffered declining floor prices and sluggish volumes.
Runes has surpassed Bitcoin in activity, bringing memecoins front and center and pushing Ordinals to the background.
Since January, monthly volumes on Ethereum’s NFT marketplace have decreased; nevertheless, even in January, these volumes were insignificant in comparison to the billions of dollars that were exchanged monthly during the bull market of 2021–2022. Volumes were not even $500 million in May.
The figure that may shock people the most is the daily Ethereum NFT trader count, which dropped below 4,000 for the first time since June 2021.
The number of users peaked in February 2022 at over 80,000, and it has been declining ever since. However, from June 2023 to February 2024, the number of users stagnated before slowly declining once more.
Since cheaper alternatives have drawn activity away from the de facto blockchain in most use cases, the NFT landscape on Ethereum may be facing more difficult obstacles. The majority of the prestigious NFT collections are still based on Ethereum, but its hegemony has waned.
Given that some previous major brand agreements haven’t been working out well, it’s unclear exactly what could spark a new NFT boom. To get things going again, it would probably take a fresh, fashionable line or a brand-new marketplace with incentives.
Disclaimer : This article was created for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. An asset’s past performance does not predict its future returns. Before making an investment, please conduct your own research, as digital assets like cryptocurrencies are highly risky and volatile financial instruments.
