The NFT market is outperforming the majority of crypto tokens right now. People are starting to view non-fungible tokens as a new asset class that derives value in a completely different way. True ownership, digitization of art, and rapid price appreciation are a few factors helping more and more people take an interest in NFTs. As the markets slowly matured, we saw new verticals develop, such as play-to-earn blockchain games, domains, digital collectibles, and NFT marketplaces.
Currently, three projects are performing incredibly well in terms of sales and statistics, and they are—Axie Infinity, Open Sea, and Crypto Punks. The collective sales volume of all three is well over $10 billion.
Axie Infinity attracted thousands of players to explore blockchain gaming and earn side income via its play-to-earn model. As Open Sea is the largest marketplace for NFTs, it cracked new sales records and generated millions in revenue. Even the project formed pre ERC-721 standard- Crypto Punks blew past billion dollars in sales. Its generative-profile picture characters captivated many people, and before you know it- they are treated as online status symbols.
Blockchain-based NFT games like Axie Infinity adopted a unique business model that continues to incentivize active players. Its protocol observed more than a 131x increase in sales and 118x in terms of revenue. The game got so popular that some of the communities in the Philippines started to make more monthly income from playing Axie Infinity than from their regular job. This explosive growth helped the game to outperform top projects like Uniswap and NBA Top Shot. Axie’s total volume is now at $2.17 billion.
As more NFT projects got listed, the Open Sea marketplace recorded billions of dollars in monthly volume. In August alone, the platform processed total sales that were worth over $3.5 billion. Open Sea outperformed other marketplaces because the quality of projects and user experience are better. Buyers prefer Ethereum-based NFT projects and they are willing to pay high gas fees. Few projects that came out as surprises are— Art Blocks, Bored Ape Yacht Club, Loot, Cool Cats, and Super rare.
Even the total number of users increased to 450,000. This might seem like a small number, but at the beginning of this year, there were only 35,000 users. Also, the daily transactions went from a few hundred to 80,000 in August. This shows how rapidly the NFT space started growing, and as a result, the Open Sea marketplace hit record numbers across the board.
Born and brought up in India, Karthikeya Gutta is a crypto journalist and freelance contributor for ItsBlockchain. He covers various aspects of the industry with in-depth analysis and research. His passion towards blockchain and crypto ecosystem is mainly because he believes it can really change the world and help millions of people.
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