SNEAK PEEK
- CryptoSlam, sales decreased for the fifth consecutive month in September to slightly over $500 million.
- Majority of NFT collections are hosted on the Ethereum blockchain, which is the reason for the continued decline in Ethereum pricing.
- BAYC, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, CryptoPunks, and fantasy football series Sorare were present in the top five selling collections.
According to NFT aggregation website CryptoSlam, sales decreased for the fifth consecutive month in September to slightly over $500 million, its lowest amount since July 2021.
The majority of NFT collections are hosted on the Ethereum blockchain, which is the reason for the continued decline in Ethereum pricing. As a result, September’s monthly sales volume is down about 90% from the record US$4.7 billion in sales reported in January 2022.
Even while the number of unique buyers increased somewhat from the previous month, it was still below 500,000 for the month, at roughly 480,000, which represents a 55% decline from the peak in January.
Yehudah Petscher, NFT relations strategist at CryptoSlam, described the NFT market in an interview with Forkast as “down and down tremendously.” I don’t believe that will change anytime soon.
Seen as an essential part of the Web3, a reinvented internet where gaming, social media, and financial services operated where gaming, social networking, and financial services are managed by decentralized apps managed by users’ wallets – a sluggish NFT market could hinder the development of this developing industry.
The long-awaited “Merge,” which fundamentally altered the Ethereum network’s infrastructure, occurred on September 15 and marked another key milestone for the network.
There were also worries that this would have had a disastrous effect on the NFT market because some Ethereum miners who wanted to oppose the merger split the network, thus duplicating the NFTs from the original network. Many markets, including market leader OpenSea, made the announcement that they will only continue to allow NFTs on the primary Ethereum network in advance of this fork.
The heavyweights of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC), CryptoPunks, and fantasy football series Sorare were present in the top five selling collections for the month as usual.
With nearly US$25 million in sales for the month, QQL Mint Pass, a generative art initiative that just made its debut in September, came in second.
The collection with the highest revenue, BAYC, sold for US$32 million.
Forkast was informed by Petscher that as the industry develops, buyers are expecting more utility from NFT initiatives. Profile images used to drive earlier bull markets, but that was starting to change.