Amid the current crypto bear market, overall NFT sales volume remained flat in September, but individual NFT sales are keeping pace. For instance, Solana NFTs are gaining momentum while high-value NFTs on Ethereum are still selling.
In September, the NFT market recorded sales worth over $947 million, according to DappRadar. That compares to $925 million and $915 million in August and July, respectively. June was the last month for NFT sales to hit a billion-dollar mark at $1.02 billion.
Possible Reasons Driving Down NFT Sales
The NFT market has declined since earlier this year. As per DappRadar, there was $5.36 billion worth of NFT trading volume in January. That means the NFT market saw about an 82% decline in sales for September. Pedro Herrera, a DappRadar Senior Blockchain Analyst, explained various potential reasons for the existing NFT market depression.
Herrera stated that the significant drop in crypto prices since the beginning of the year could be the main reason for the NFT sales decline. For instance, ETH has fallen by about 65% since January this year. He added that investors appear more risk-averse amid the ongoing crypto market turmoil.
Regardless of the low prices and declining cryptocurrencies’ value, the NFTs are still selling by the millions. The number keeps increasing. In September, nearly 8.77 million NFTs were transacted compared to 7.67 million recorded in August and 5.88 million sold in July.
The September figure is the third highest in 2022 as January leads with 12.15 million sold NFTs. Herrera believes that the demand for NFTs will not fade despite their price drop. He points to Solana’s NFT sales as they have seen tremendous growth recently thanks to successful projects like ABC and Yoots.
DappRadar recorded about $132 million worth of Solana NFT sales in September compared to $68.4 million in August.
OpenSea Could Lose Control over NFT Market to Rivals
In addition, as per data from DappRadar, OpenSea is slowly losing control over the NFT market. Despite topping rivals with $350 million worth of NFT sales in September, its main rival X2Y2 is closing the gap with a $297 million trading volume.
Also, Magic Eden, the leading Solana NFT marketplace, recorded $126 million worth of NFT sales in September. To sum up, Herrera does not believe that the NFT market will record monthly totals of over $5 billion soon. He anticipates the market will reach $2 billion in monthly sales with time.
He links the projected growth to increasing activity from brands in the space, like Ticketmaster and Starbucks, plus the potential adoption of NFTs in the gaming industry.
