NFT sales in 2022 nearly matched 2021 boom, despite market crash

Despite months of declining sales and falling pricesall in all NFT sales volume last year almost matched the 2021 peak, according to data from DappRadar. A busy start to the NFT market in 2022 bolstered the year-to-date and helped offset the several weaker months that followed, the data suggests.

The NFT market generated around $24.7 billion in organic trading volume in 2022 across blockchain platforms and marketplaces, DappRadar shared with Decrypt. That’s a slight decrease from the $25.1 billion total recorded in 2021 as The NFT market increased in activity and interest as tokenized collectibles first became more than a niche interest.

DappRadar’s “organic” data excludes trades suspected of being wash trades, or trades that have been manipulated in some way.

Wash trading often occurs when traders sell their own NFTs back and forth between their controlled wallets at high prices, often in an attempt to play a token reward model in a marketplace. Laundry trade for billions of dollars were excluded from the data, as seen on marketplaces such as LooksRare and X2Y2, which offered token incentives for trading.

While overall trading volume for the year was largely flat, DappRadar recorded a large increase in the number of NFTs traded last year. The research firm recorded around 101 million NFT trades during 2022, compared to around 58.6 million NFT trades in 2021. In other words, more NFTs were traded at lower USD values, given crumbling crypto and NFT prices.

NFTs in 2022

The crypto market lost significant value over the course of the year, with losses accelerating in May amid the collapse of Terras LUNA and UST. The so-called crypto winter was then exacerbated by fall of crypto exchange FTX and the resultant industrial contagionwhich further affects crypto prices.

The NFT market followed a similar development throughout the year. Sales picked up in January as 2021’s momentum carried into the new year, with top marketplace OpenSea alone recording a record month with 5 billion dollars in trading volume.

Trading volume fell in the months afterwards, but then massive launch at the end of April of NFT plots for Yuga Labs’ The other side-one Bored Ape Yacht Club-theme metaverse games – lifted the market and drove OpenSea to a single-day record for trading volume. At the time, it looked like 2022 NFT sales volume could top 2021 numbers.

However, that peak did not last. As crypto prices collapsed in May, so did NFT trading momentum, and prices fell sharply as a result. Monthly volume fell from nearly $3.3 billion in May to just over $1 billion in June, per DappRadar, but the market hasn’t topped $1 billion in the months since.

Ethereum’s Bored Ape Yacht Club was last year’s best selling NFT projectaccording to data from CryptoSlam, with trade volume worth nearly $1.6 billion. However, the vast majority of this trading took place between January and May, when the starting prices fell off a peak in late April of $429,000 value of ETH to a recent low of less than $60,000 in November.

December data

Compared to the early year highs, the NFT market ended 2022 with a relative whimper. But overall trading volume was up slightly on November’s figures, while the number of NFTs sold in the final month of the year rebounded after a fall last month.

According to DappRadar, the NFT market generated nearly $684 million in organic trades in December, up from an adjusted total of over $662 million in November. Around 6.7 million NFTs were sold during the month, up from around 4.8 million in November and 6.1 million in October.

OpenSea remained the leading marketplace for organic NFT trades, with a value of over $297 million in December, according to DappRadar. That’s up from about $259 million in November. Obscuritya newer rival that has encouraged NFT trading with the promise of upcoming token rewards jumped from around $115 million in November to nearly $177 million in December.

The Solana blockchain continued its recent up-and-down pattern, falling to nearly $70 million from $95 million in November. It had previously dipped to $67 million in October after a hot September with nearly $134 million in NFT sales on the back of launch of y00ts. The the value of SOL fell sharply in November and December due to the FTX collapse.

Meanwhile, Flow – the blockchain platform behind NBA top shot and NFL all day– stopped the bleeding after two consecutive months with a 50% or more reduction. Flow posted about $6.8 million in NFT sales in December, down from about $7.7 million in November.

And Top Shot saw its first small month-on-month increase the following month months of declineup to 2.2 million dollars in December (per CryptoSlam) after less than $2.1 million of NFT sales in November. The FLOW token set a new all-time low price earlier this week having steadily lost steam amid falling NFT activity on the platform.