Can the Aptos NFT scene compete with Ethereum’s?

The hype around Aptos drives intense activity to the various NFT marketplaces. However, there are signs that enthusiasm for Aptos NFTs may not remain consistent in the long run.

An emerging NFT market

Launched October 17, Aptos is a Proof-of-Stake Layer 1 blockchain developed by former Meta engineers. The protocol aims to leverage the new smart contract language, Move, to reach a throughput of over 100,000 transactions per second. Although Apto’s mainnet is barely a week old, the NFT scene has already seen intense activity, with multiple marketplaces competing for trading volume across a couple of dozen pools.

Among the competing platforms, Topaz seems to have taken the lead. At the time of writing, the marketplace had reached total trading volumes from around 82,000 APT ($779,000 at today’s prices) to 1,200 APT ($11,400) across its twenty largest pools (among several hundred listed), with the top four pools each registering more than 20,500 APT ($194,750). According to the Topaz team, the marketplace reached $1.1 million in total trading volume within four and a half days of launch; a day later, the number stood to around 1.8 million dollars.

Although there are currently no tools to independently verify these calculations, the increasing trading volume of several Topaz NFT listings seems to indicate that the platform is gaining traction. In the last 24 hours, collections like Pixel Aptos Citizen, Aptos Birds and Moonlight saw their trading volumes increase with 645,981%, 17,112% and 8,320% respectively – and they are far from the only ones.

Rival NFT marketplaces include Blue move and Souffle3. Blue Move, which models its platform after Ethereum NFT giant OpenSea, currently lists only nine collections. Trading volume is lower, but not negligible; the top five collections have each fetched between 25,000 APT ($237,500) and 9,500 APT ($90,250) – the rest ranging between 1,200 APT ($11,400) and 500 APT ($4,750). Souffl3, on the other hand, has had his say twenty collections earn anywhere between 23,000 APT ($218,500) and 1,000 APT ($9,500) in trading volume, averaging around 5,015 APT ($47,600) per NFT collection.

What’s in store for Aptos NFTs?

While healthy trading volumes are a good sign for the new Aptos NFT scene, the metric doesn’t quite tell the whole story. So far, only a few unique collections have seen trading volume translate into price gains. One of them, Aptomingos, was issued as a free coin, but at the time of writing, the cheapest items in the collection were trading for 105 APT (nearly $1,000) on Topaz. Most other Aptos NFT projects have been content to copy known collections from other ecosystems. Among its many collections, Topaz lists Aptos Toads, Bored Aptos Yacht Club, Aptos Birds and Aptos Monke Mafia – all copies of successful Ethereum and Solana NFT.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that if we take the trading volume figures provided by Topaz at face value (roughly $700,000 in the last 24 hours), the marketplace would still only rank fourth or fifth in terms of daily trading volume. OpenSea, in comparison, reached $7.4 million in trading volume on Ethereum alone in the same time frame, per DappRadar data. It is also too early to say whether Topaz and other Aptos marketplaces will be able to maintain the pace of growth or their daily trading volume.

Most likely, NFT activity on Aptos is currently driven by the hype caused by the protocol’s recent launch and token airdrop. Early Aptos testnet users were assigned 150 APT tokens on October 19; airdrop was worth around $1237 at the time. The narrative that Aptos became a “Solana killer” thanks to its higher throughput may also come into play.

For Aptos NFTs to compete with Ethereum or Solana NFTs, the project will most likely need to entice creative and innovative NFT founders to launch into its ecosystem. Other blockchains, such as BNB Chain, have shown that sheer user numbers and infrastructure are not enough to create a sustainable, thriving NFT space. In fact, BNB Chain’s leading marketplace, Pancake Swaponly made just under $12,000 in NFT trading volume in the last 24 hours, despite the protocol having more than $2.79 billion in value locked up and a market cap of $4.25 billion.

Disclaimer: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH and several other crypto assets.