In brief
- The Flow blockchain’s cryptocurrency hit a new low under $0.90 on Thursday.
- NFT trading on Flow has fallen sharply in recent months, and Dapper Labs held layoffs in November.
Flow surged to prominence in early 2021 as NBA Top Shot led the charge for NFTs into the mainstream. But amid a significant decline in trading action on the platform and following recent layoffs from creator Dapper Labs, the blockchain’s native coin just set a new all-time low.
Flow, the network’s eponymous native cryptocurrency, fell to $0.89 early this morning, marking a new low according to data tracked by CoinGecko. It has rebounded slightly to above $0.90, but Flow is still down 6% on the day, nearly 14% over the past week, and about 26% in 30 days.
That’s a marked contrast to the largest cryptocurrencies by market cap, Bitcoin and Ethereum, which have each posted gains in recent weeks. Bitcoin is up nearly 5% in the last month, while Ethereum has risen about 3% during the same span.
Overall, Flow has fallen 98% in price since peaking above $42 per coin in April 2021, just as the initial NBA Top Shot hype cycle was starting to fade. Both Bitcoin and Ethereum are down about 75% from their respective all-time highs.
Flow’s accelerated decline recently comes amid collapsing NFT trading volume on the network, with sharp month-over-month drops in network trading and declining activity on Dapper’s flagship platforms NBA Top Shot and NFL All Day.
Solana Soars, Flow Falls as NFT Market Declines Further in November
Turmoil across the cryptocurrency market in November spilled into the NFT space, with falling crypto prices and declining NFT valuations further impacting an ever-weakening market. New data from DappRadar suggests that total NFT trading volume fell again in November, continuing a broader market trend that began in May. According to data provided by the analytics firm, the overall NFT market produced about $643 million worth of organic trading volume in November. That’s down over 8% from October,...
According to data from DappRadar, NFT trading volume on the Flow blockchain fell from nearly $39 million in September to about $15.6 million in October, and then again to about $7.7 million in November. Trading so far in December is trending below last month’s figure.
A closer look at individual projects echoes the recent declines, with NBA Top Shot notching its worst month in nearly two years with under $2.1 million worth of marketplace trading in November, per CryptoSlam. That’s down from about $2.7 million in October, $4.7 million in September, and $7 million in August. Transaction and unique buyer counts have fallen as well.
NBA Top Shot Just Had Its Worst Month Since 2020
NBA Top Shot surged to popularity at the start of 2021, as Dapper Labs’ digital collectibles platform helped bring NFTs into the mainstream. But the hype was short-lived, and sales momentum has gradually dwindled since. In October, the platform hit a nearly two-year low for monthly sales. According to data from NFT analytics platform CryptoSlam, NBA Top Shot generated just under $2.7 million worth of secondary market sales in October—down 43% from nearly $4.7 million in trades in September. It’s...
NBA Top Shot had its heyday in early 2021, as the platform was inundated with users when NFTs first found a broad audience outside of the crypto world. Top Shot notched $224 million worth of trading volume in February 2021 and nearly as much the following month, but prices fell sharply soon after as the initial NFT buzz died down.
NFL All Day, Flow’s more recent sports NFT platform, has seen similar declines in recent months. It notched a record $14.3 million in trading volume in September, but then fell to nearly $6.7 million in October and $3.6 million in November. According to CryptoSlam, All Day has only amassed about $769,000 in marketplace trades so far in December.
The New Landscape for NFT Drops: Bad Grrls Creative Club, BeetsDAO, and Cymbal at Camp Decrypt 2022
Amid a crypto bear market and recent declines in NFT sales volume, what's the new roadmap for new NFT collections? What's expected by community members and collectors? Toni Thai Sterrett of Bad Grrls Creative Club, Jordan Garbis of BeetsDAO, and Eric Feng of NFT block explorer discussed with Decrypt's Kate Irwin at Camp Decrypt Napa.
Dapper Labs, the original creator of Flow and core contributor to the decentralized network, recently held significant layoffs amid the declining NFT market and so-called crypto winter. The firm announced a 22% reduction in staff in early November, although the number of impacted individuals was not revealed.
While Flow’s NFT trading has declined more sharply than other popular networks like Ethereum and Solana in recent months, the broader NFT market has lost significant momentum since early this year. The market yielded $5.36 billion of organic NFT trading volume in January, per data from DappRadar, but just $643 million in November.
