The Yacht Club’s feelin’ packed… As bitcoin boomed last week to a 20-month high, non-fungible tokens showed signs of waking from crypto winter’s hibernation. On the ethereum blockchain — which is home to marquee NFT collections including Bored Apes, CryptoPunks, and Pudgy Penguins — weekly trading volumes jumped 250% over two months (as of Monday). In the past month, prices of the cheapest CryptoPunks (aka: floor price) are up nearly 45%.
Success breeds… success? Industry analysts point to the price of ether — which climbed nearly 40% over the past two months to $2.3K — as likely contributing to the trading surge.
An OpenSea change… While the rising NFTide may spur déjà vu, anyone just now returning to the non-fungible scene will find a market vastly changed from the hype-filled days of late 2021. For starters, OpenSea is no longer the dominant NFT marketplace. In its spot on the podium: Blur. Launched in 2022, Blur is now home to nearly 80% of ethereum NFT transaction volume, with OpenSea clocking a mere 17% (ouch). Aiding its coup: Blur’s token airdrops helped it pull traders from OpenSea, and its low creator royalty fee — which OpenSea begrudgingly copied — means sellers can keep more of their profits (bad for artists, but good for traders).
Growth can go sideways as well as up… While overall transactions #s are still way down from their peak, ethereum-based NFTs are having a moment. But rival blockchains are also seeing growth. Ordinals (essentially bitcoin-based NFTs) are once again so popular that they’re driving up transaction fees on the OG blockchain. And over on the Solana blockchain, NFT sales volume was up nearly 30% over the past week.