The non-fungible token (NFT) market experienced a surge in activity in the early part of the year, leading to a confusing and potentially risky environment for investors. The influx of new collections and marketplaces, as well as the potential for easy profits, attracted fraudulent activity. In October, an article was published about NFT wash trading, and some new marketplaces were found to be built on fake activity. However, the market crash that occurred later in the year led to a decrease in overall activity, both legitimate and fraudulent.
While some smaller collections and grassroots community building took place in the NFT market (such as Solana and Magic Eden), the year also saw the establishment of the first NFT megacorporation, Yuga Labs. In addition to these developments, the NFT market saw the emergence of innovative collections that demonstrated a demand for digital, non-fungible art.
Rather than providing predictions for 2022 and the future of the NFT market, this article presents important statistics from the previous year to allow readers to form their own conclusions about the current state and potential direction of the industry.
9 Stats in regards to the NFT Trade
1. Whole gross sales of NFTs in 2022 was $55.5B
That is up 175% from $20.2B in 2021. Whenever you examine 2020 to 2022 whole gross sales, it’s 390X extra.
2. The market capitalization of the NFT trade peaked on April 4th at $41.5B
Market capitalization is calculated because the sum of every NFT is valued on the higher of its final traded worth and the ground worth of the gathering, respectively. Suspected wash trades have been filtered out.
3. Roughly 85K NFT collections had been launched final yr
In 2021, there have been round 14.5K collections, whereas the quantity almost reached 99K by the top of 2022. Discover that Opensea stays the chief in each years.
4. About 7,700 collections had buying and selling quantity over $100K
Do be aware that almost all of this exercise didn’t come from a reputable, natural curiosity within the mission based mostly on the date collected.
5. Solely 2,623 collections had greater than 1000 distinctive consumers
As with all stats within the NFT trade, this one needs to be taken with a grain of salt as a result of the important quantity of wash buying and selling, particularly in the course of the yr’s first half.
Reference: Top Collections 2022
6. NFT buying and selling quantity reached its 2022 peak in January, with $17.4B in worth
This was greater than a 4x bounce from the earlier month (December 2021). This was additionally the month when Google searches for the key phrase “NFT” reached their all-time excessive.
7. The largest hole between the variety of sellers and consumers was in January, with about 200K extra sellers than there have been consumers.
But January was additionally the most popular month for NFT costs for many main collections, indicating that utilizing these metrics as an analog for provide and demand has flaws.
8. Concluding yr, 46% of whole NFT buying and selling quantity was prone to be attributable to wash buying and selling
There are a number of indicators and filters to detect suspicious exercise. To determine these kinds of transactions, I take advantage of Footprint Analytics’ filters to separate transactions to the next system:
- a.) Overpriced NFT trades (10x OpenSea Common Value)
- b.) Collections with 0% royalties (besides CryptoPunks and ENS)
- c.) An NFT purchased greater than a standard quantity of instances in a day (presently filtered for greater than 3+)
- d.) An NFT purchased by the identical purchaser handle in a brief interval (presently filtered for 120 minutes)
6 Stats about NFT Collections
9. The gathering with the biggest market value by the top of the yr was CryptoPunks at $1.1B
cryptocurrency Punks, launched by Larva Labs in 2017, was the primary NFT assortment to turn out to be a family identify and have the best flooring worth within the trade. Yuga Labs acquired the IP of the gathering in March 2022.
Reference: 2022: Top Collections by Market Cap
10. Buying and selling quantity of main collections within the Yugaverse—Yuga Labs’ portfolio of merchandise—was $3.1B
This sum consists of Bored Ape Yacht Membership, Mutant Ape Yacht Membership, Bored Ape Kennel Membership, Otherside, and CryptoPunks. It excludes Meebits, which had extra buying and selling quantity than all of those mixed,
Reference: Yuga Labs (Trading Volume in 2022)
11. Yuga Labs’ portfolio accounts for about 20% of the overall market value of your entire NFT trade
This sum consists of Bored Ape Yacht Membership, Mutant Ape Yacht Membership, Bored Ape Kennel Membership, Otherside, CryptoPunks, and Meebits.
12. With none wash commerce filtering, Terraforms by Mathcastles had an astounding $12B in buying and selling quantity, greater than every other assortment, throughout 11,341 transactions
Nonetheless, 99.8% of the amount and 46.3% of transactions had been detected as wash buying and selling.
Reference: NFT – Collections
13. When filtering out wash buying and selling, CryptoPunks had the best quantity ($2.9B) adopted by Bored Ape Yacht Membership ($2.3B)
Reference: 2022: Top Collections by volume
14. ArtBlocks Curated was the 4th most traded assortment by quantity and amassed a market value $325M
ArtBlocks demonstrated that there exists a marketplace for high-end creative NFTs—it stands out amongst Yuga PFP initiatives and metaverse land NFTs on the prime of the rankings
15. There have been 7 main collections whose quantity was over 95% wash buying and selling
For this stat, “major” means having over $1M in actual buying and selling quantity. Terraforms by Mathcastles, Extra Loot, dotdotdots, Dreadfulz, Audioglyphs, CryptoPhunksV2, and Meebits.
6 Stats about Chains and Markets for NFT Tasks
16. Ethereum had 95% p.c of quantity, 47% of transactions, and 71% of protocols
These figures are virtually the identical as in 2021. Primarily based on the info, Ethereum remains to be essentially the most extensively used for NFT.
Reference: 2022 Market Share of Transactions by Chain and 2022 Market Share of Trading Volume by Chain and Yearly Number of NFT Protocols by Chain
17. Solana went from having no NFT protocols in 2021 to five,335 in 2022
Solana is ranked third globally on the level of writing.
One other factor to notice is that Ethereum grew from 420 in 2019 to 55,144 in 2022.
18. OpenSea hosted 53% of all whole collections
OpenSea remained {the marketplace} of alternatives for Ethereum and Polygon. Nonetheless, Magic Eden capitalized on its Solana first-mover benefit to be {the marketplace} of alternatives for collections on this chain (OpenSea began itemizing them in April.) Observe: a group can checklist on a number of marketplaces.
Reference: 2022: Number of Marketplace Collections by Chain
19. Solana had extra lively customers in October, with 411K, than Ethereum, with 392K
Whereas many of the blue-chip collections and collectors transact on OpenSea and Ethereum, Solana constructed up a large group of NFT lovers in 2022. Solana’s lively customers hovered between 20-45% of the overall market share—October was the one month it overtook Ethereum for this metric
Reference: Chain Monthly Active User
20. OpenSea had 96,459 distinctive wallets make an exchange on the protocol on Feb. 2
That is extra transactions than every other market on every other day.
Reference: 2022 Marketplace Daily Active User
21. Over $903M in platform charges had been generated on OpenSea, about to each {the marketplace} and creators
This made OpenSea essentially the most worthwhile market by way of charges generated from buying and selling (which went to the platform and are disbursed to creators.)
Reference: Top Marketplaces
6 Stats about NFT Funding & Fundraising
22. The NFT trade obtained a complete of $2.98B in fundraising in 2022
The best was in January 2022 at $964M. The bottom is in December at $29.4M.
23. Animoca Manufacturers closed the biggest spherical of the yr, $358M led by Liberty Metropolis Ventures
Animoca has stated it is going to use the funding for strategic acquisitions and investments, develop its video games and metaverse merchandise, and purchase licenses for well-liked mental properties.
Reference: 2022 NFT Fundraising Details
24. There have been 1,992 whole fundraising rounds in 2022, 756 greater than in 2021
Reference: Investment by Category in 2022
25. Whereas NFT-related initiatives had been the preferred class amongst VCs by the variety of rounds, they had been the 2nd-least well-liked in 2022
In 2022, basic Web3 initiatives closed essentially the most rounds (711), adopted by decentralized finance (362), infrastructure (331), NFTs (326), and, lastly, CeFi (257).
26. Seed rounds made up 81% of whole NFT funding rounds
Reference: NFTs Funding Rounds
27. The two largest rounds for pure NFT initiatives went to OpenSea ($300M) and Dapper Labs ($250M)
The OpenSea spherical was certainly one of solely 5 Collection C or D rounds in 2022. Dapper Labs is the studio behind the NBA Prime Shot assortment.
Key Takeaways
As we will see, Internet 3.0 is proliferating. NFT is undoubtedly a part of the entire Internet 3.0 ecosystem. Within the Internet 3.0 ecosystem, NFTs are sometimes used to facilitate the shopping for and promoting of distinctive digital belongings on distributed platforms. These platforms use sensible contracts to allow transactions without the necessity for intermediaries. They will facilitate the shopping for and promoting of NFTs and permit NFT holders to earn passive earnings by lending out their NFTs. There are numerous use instances to showcase.
Internet 3.0 will proceed to attract extra funding in 2023 based mostly on some of the many deals flows I see available in the market. OKX Ventures and GSRV co-lead a $2 Million seed spherical for a Internet 3.0 distributed Id platform. Binance Labs launched a $500M funds to help promising Internet 3.0 initiatives and start-up companies with nice potential earlier this yr. Du Jun, the co-founder of virtual currency change Huobi International, runs ABCDE Capital, a $400M Internet 3.0 enterprise capital fund is devoted to investing in web3 builders.
Other than the crypto firms-led companies, it’s additionally true that conventional funding corporations are starting to take discover of the Internet 3.0 ecosystem and are beginning to spend money on corporations and initiatives which are engaged on distributed applied sciences, corresponding to distributed ledger technology and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
There are a number of explanations why conventional funding corporations could be fascinated about investing in web3 applied sciences. One purpose is that the Internet 3.0 ecosystem remains to be in its early levels and has a lot progress potential. Distributed applied sciences have the potential to revolutionize many alternative industries, from banking and actual property to artwork and collectibles.
Another excuse is that the Internet 3.0 ecosystem is comparatively uncorrelated with conventional monetary markets, which might supply diversification advantages for traders. This may be particularly interesting in instances of financial uncertainty when conventional monetary markets could also be extra unstable.
Ending with a quote:
“Web 3.0 brings endless opportunities to many people, changes lives in Kenya, removes barriers in India and empowers developers in China to service global audiences during the COVID lockdown period. Your gateway to Web 3.0 is just one click away. Let’s innovate.” – Anndy Lian.
