Ethereum NFT Sales Hold Steady in July as Trading Volume Sinks Further

By Andrew Hayward

As July nears its end, month-to-date data from top NFT marketplace OpenSea suggests that Ethereum NFTs are still selling at roughly the same rate amid the crypto bear market, with both the sales tally and number of unique users remaining relatively steady compared to June. However, the total USD value of those sold NFTs has fallen substantially once again.

Data from analytics platform Dune shows about 1.61 million Ethereum NFTs sold so far in July on OpenSea compared to 1.54 million for all of June, while the number of unique traders has ticked up slightly from nearly 393,000 in June to over 400,000 so far in July.

Despite slightly more users transacting on OpenSea and buying more collective NFTs overall in July, the value measured in U.S. dollars has fallen: Dune shows more than $495 million worth of Ethereum NFT volume so far in July compared to $695 million across June.

As of this writing, that’s a 29% month-over-month drop in sales volume measured in U.S. dollars. If recent daily trading trends continue, OpenSea could finish the month with about $530 million worth of Ethereum trading volume, which would mark a nearly 24% month-over-month decline. Compare that to a 73% month-over-month drop from May to June as the crypto market crash took hold.

An NFT is a blockchain token that represents ownership in an item, including digital goods like artwork, profile pictures, and collectibles. The market produced $25 billion worth of trading volume across all of 2021, per data from DappRadar, and added nearly $20 billion more worth of organic trading (excluding suspected “wash trades”) through the first half of 2022.

OpenSea isn’t the only marketplace in the Ethereum space, but it’s the largest in terms of organic trading volume—nearly 82% of that figure during the week ending July 25, according to another Dune dashboard.

It typically provides a good sense of trading trends on Ethereum, by far the largest blockchain network for NFTs in terms of trading volume. Rival marketplaces LooksRare and X2Y2 are known for hosting large amounts of wash trading, or non-organic NFT trades made at artificially inflated prices between linked wallets in order to earn trading rewards.

We won’t have a complete accounting of July’s overall NFT market trends until after the month ends, but OpenSea’s current NFT sales and user numbers suggest that people are still buying and selling NFTs at a steady rate—albeit at much lower average prices than earlier this year.

Additional data from analytics platform CryptoSlam points to an average USD sale price of $451 per Ethereum NFT across marketplaces so far this month, compared to $691 in June. Both figures are sharply lower than previous months, including $2,436 in May and $3,109 in April. That, however, may have as much to do with the falling price of ETH as it does individual NFT prices. ETH was trading above $3,000 in April and is now down to around $1,700.

Meanwhile, NFT trading activity on the Solana blockchain platform has apparently slowed more significantly than on Ethereum. CryptoSlam shows $52.4 million worth of Solana NFT trades so far in July compared to $91.5 million for all of June—a nearly 43% drop based on current data, although that percentage should drop as data from the rest of the month is added.

As of now, the site shows about 1.45 million NFT sales on Solana so far this month compared to 1.56 million for all of June, with less than 110,000 unique buyers compared to almost 136,000 unique buyers last month. The average Solana NFT sale price dipped from $212 in May to under $59 in June, and about $36 so far in July, per CryptoSlam. Like ETH, however, Solana's native SOL cryptocurrency was in May trading for roughly double its current price.

The top NFT collection over the past 30 days, according to the site, is the Bored Ape Yacht Club with over $52 million worth of trading volume, followed by CryptoPunks at $49 million and fantasy soccer NFT game Sorare at nearly $33 million. Outside of NBA Top Shot on Flow, the entire top 20 is made up of Ethereum-based NFT projects.

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