People Say NFTs are Dead, I Don't Think So
This might come as a shock, but I just discovered a chain where 99.47% of all NFT collections are dead, and by dead, I mean not a single one has crossed 1,000+ trades in the last three months.
The popular claim around CT is that 96% of NFTs are worthless. Thatâs a cold statement if you ask me.
So I decided to dig deeper, and what I found was wild đđ»
â Polygon: 31 active collections
â Base: 102 active collections
â Arbitrum: 10 active collections
â Ethereum: the âhealthiest,â with 111 active collections, yet those few alone account for 63.17% of all ETH NFT trading volume.
Generally, it might not look so good, but I also found some collections worth checking out.
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Letâs start this way, the analysis was done across five major chains: Ethereum, Solana, Base, Arbitrum, and Polygon.
A few of these chains have strong use cases and impressive daily trading volumes. But then, as much as Solana pulls in a lot of volume daily and some really good MVP launches almost every other week, its NFT space still has a lot of work to do.
Out of 399,981 NFT collections, not a single one has crossed 1,000 trades in the last 90 days. In fact, the highest trade count on Solana doesnât even reach that mark.
The stats on the other chains are slightly better â but only just.
I'll leave a disclaimer here, this article is in no way trying to fud any project or chain, but to simply show you what the data says and how to do it better.I also have an article ready for how to build NFTs that last, and how to spot thosse kind of NFTs. I'll probably put it up tomorrow.
But let's get back to this. đ
Now, even though a vast majority of these collections are dead, a few are still doing quite well, accounting for most of the volume in the entire sector.
Two chains, in particular, stand out in terms of the depth of liquidity flowing in:
â Ethereum: $730.2M
â Base: $171.7M
Thatâs a lot of money if you as me. đ€§
Taking a deeper look, youâd notice something, Baseâs top collection, âDX Terminal,â recorded over 2.57 million trades, generating $64.69M in volume.
However, Baseâs average sale prices for these high-volume collections are significantly lower compared to that of Ethereum (for example, $20.06 for DX Terminal).
Almost seems like a farming activity, perhaps for an airdrop.
And whenever you start noticing that kind of flow and attention, it usually means thereâs more to it than the obvious.
One of the collections leading the charge in liquidity flow right now is Moonbirds.
A few days before the end of April, its floor was around 0.7 ETH, and now it has already crossed 3 ETH.
We can break this price move into three stages:
~ After the Doodles token launch, Orangecaps and the Moonbirds team dropped a few hints that a Moonbirds token might be on the way.
~ By August, the floor climbed to around 1.4 ETH. Then came the official token confirmation and a listing on the Kaito leaderboard, which pushed the floor to roughly 1.7â2 ETH.
~ About two months after the Kaito launch, the floor doubled again â thatâs when they finally announced the token ticker: $BIRB
They currently have three NFT collections: Moonbirds, Moonbird Mythics, and Moonbird Oddities.
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Now I also spotted a rare event. The idea of an NFT collection staying quiet for a while and then suddenly coming back to life rarely happens.
I checked for collections that had less than 100 trades in the previous two months but started showing strong activity in the last 30 days. Only a few made the cut.
One that really stood out was Art Blocks, it went from 0 trades to 530 in just a month, with over $4M in volume.
In conclusion, most NFTs are not exactly dead. The truth is that a lot of them were launched mainly on speculation. Because of that, it was easy for them to rise during a particular period and then tank after a while.
However, the new NFTs coming out now and those ones that have stood strong amidst the bear market, have specific use cases, and because of those use cases, they tend to last beyond the normal conventional rise and drop time.
I will speak more about this in my next article. Look out for it.