More than $23.7 billion worth of non-fungible tokens (NFT) were minted and traded on Ethereum this year, with global trading volume in the NFT market down nearly 80% from last year.
Nansen analysts reported that NFT transactions on Ethereum reached $23.7 billion in 2022. The best-selling NFT collections were Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC), and the new Otherdeed for Otherside collection, with daily NFT trading volume hitting $1.6 billion after the launch.
According to analysts, the volume of Ethereum-based NFT transactions was 22.2 million ETH this year, but trading volume dropped to 8.77 million ETH after using the Wash Trading filter. Thus, data from Nansen confirmed earlier research, revealing that over 40% of NFT trading turnover is fictitious.
NFT trading volume totaled about $623 million in December, up 10% from November, but still 80% less than last December, according to the CryptoSlam service. That said, the decline isn’t as significant as it was in September, when the drop exceeded 99% from the 2022 peak.
Marketplace OpenSea saw the greatest activity of NFT traders in December 2022, with trading volume up 6,833% and reaching $267.65 million on December 27. The platform’s indicators are almost twice as high as the trading volume of its closest competitor — Blur ($149.92 million). So, regardless of the decrease in OpenSea’s market share, the platform remains the leader in the NFT market.
However, the popularity of NFTs keeps falling. This is evidenced by data from Google Trends. Search queries on NFT since May 2022 didn’t get more than 23 points, and from December 18 to 24, they scored only 14 points. This is despite the fact that from 16 to 22 January 2022, users showed the maximum interest in the industry — 100 points.
Recall that the number of unique NFT traders in 2022 was nine times higher than in 2021.
