Ethereum NFT sales remain steady in July as trading volume declines further

As July draws to a close, month-to-date data from the top NFT marketplace Open sea suggests it Ethereum NFTs are still selling at about the same rate in the middle the crypto bear market, with both sales figures and the number of unique users remaining relatively stable compared to June. However, the total USD value of the NFTs sold has fallen significantly again.

Data from the analysis platform Dune shows approximately 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 risen slightly from nearly 393,000 in June to over 400,000 so far in July.

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

At the time of writing, there is a 29% month-over-month drop in sales volume measured in US dollars. If recent daily trading trends continue, OpenSea could end the month with an Ethereum trading volume worth around $530 million, which would mark a nearly 24% month-over-month decline. Compare it to a drop of 73% month over month from May to June when the crash in the crypto market took hold.

An NFT is a blockchain token that represents ownership of an item, including digital goods such as artwork, profile pictures, and collectibles. The market produced $25 billion value of trade volume throughout 2021, per data from DappRadar, and added nearly $20 billion more worth of organic trade (excl suspected “launderer”) through the first half of 2022.

OpenSea is not the only marketplace in the Ethereum space, but it is 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 usually gives 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 quantities of laundry tradeor non-organic NFT trades made at artificially inflated prices between linked wallets to earn trading rewards.

We won’t have a full accounting of July’s overall NFT market trends until after the month is over, 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 the analysis 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 numbers are sharply lower than previous months, including $2,436 in May and $3,109 in April. However, that may have as much to do with the falling price of ETH as it does individual NFT prices. ETH traded above $3000 in April and is now down to around $1700.

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

As of now, the site shows approximately 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 nearly 136,000 unique buyers last month. The average Solana NFT sale price fell from $212 in May to below $59 in June, and about $36 so far in July, per CryptoSlam. However, like ETH, Solana’s original SOL cryptocurrency traded in May for roughly double its current price.

The best NFT collection in the last 30 days, according to the website, is Bored Ape Yacht Club with over $52 million in trading volume, followed by CryptoPunks to $49 million and fantasy football NFT games Hurt to almost 33 million dollars. Outside NBA top shot on Flowthe entire top 20 consists of Ethereum-based NFT projects.