NFT The winter is not getting any warmer: Sales fell a further 25% in October

Monday is busy Art Gobbler’s NFT launch may have made a big splash, but data from October shows that it ultimately ended a weak month for the overall market. Total trading volume and the number of NFTs sold both fell during October, per DappRadarwith Solana trade falls by 50% and Ethereum losing steam too.

Overall, Solana NFT trading volume fell 50% from $134 million in September to $67 million in October, according to the analytics platform’s data. Solana experienced rising trade in September, partly due to launch of y00ts NFT mint pass and momentum around the creator’s former DeGods projecttold DappRadar Senior Blockchain Analyst Pedro Herrera Decrypt.

However, there may be other reasons for Solana’s falling trading activity in October. Moves of Magic Eden and other marketplaces no longer requiring merchants to pay royalties to creators had an impact on enthusiasm in the Solana community. Meanwhile, the rise of NFTs on rival new platform Aptos appeared to draw some liquidity from the Solana market.

DappRadar’s data removes suspects wash trades– that is, when someone sells an NFT between their own controlled wallets at very high prices to try to play a token reward model, or help an NFT project gain increased visibility. Magic Eden experienced a rush of laundry trade after making royalties for creators optional and removing its own marketplace fee as well.

Herrera said Solana’s October trading volume suggests another market “consolidation phase” for NFTs on the platform, and is “more or less in line” with July and August trading numbers before September’s pop in activity.

Ethereum is moving

Trading volume for Ethereum also decreased in October, but not nearly as much as Solana. DappRadar’s data points to around $518 million in total Ethereum NFT trading across marketplaces – down from just over $687 million in September.

However, there is a notable gap in the data, as DappRadar has yet to start tracking trade data from Blur, a new Paradigm-backed marketplace that launched in September. ONE dashboard on the data platform, Dune points to about 24,765 ETH in October trading on Blur, which amounts to almost $39.3 million based on the ETH price at the end of the month from CoinGecko.

In other words, some Ethereum trading from OpenSea and other marketplaces may slip over to Blur, but not nearly enough to close the trading volume gap that DappRadar recorded in October. Still, momentum can build forward: Blur has beat OpenSea in trade volume since Monday’s Art Gobblers launch, per data from a Dune dashboard.

Adding the Blur number to DappRadar’s total from the rest of the NFT market in October gives a total of approx. $702 million NFT trades for the month – down nearly 25% from DappRadar’s updated total market figure of $931 million in September.

Both figures are down dramatically from earlier this year, as the market produced $5.36 billion worth of organic trading volume in January, and continued to reach multi-billion through May. However, after the cryptocurrency market crashed in Maythe NFT space followed suit with falling asset prices along with declining trading volumes.

While Ethereum NFT trading on top marketplace OpenSea fell around 12% in October, from nearly $356 million to just over $313 million, organic trading on X2Y2 – that is, with wash trades removed – fell 39% from $297 million to just under of 182 million dollars.

More from October

Elsewhere in the NFT ecosystem, trading volume on the Ethereum scaling network Polygon rose 46% in October to $10.8 million on the back of Reddit’s Collectible Avatars, which caught steam late in the month. However, act on Flow then fell a steep 60% in part due to slowing activity at Dapper Labs’ NFL all day and NBA top shot collectibles platforms.

The number of NFTs executed in October also fell sharply from September, with DappRadar tracking around 6.14 million sales in October compared to 8.5 million the previous month.

Blur added around 175,000 NFT sales in October on top of that number, per Dune, but the overall total is still far short of the number of sales recorded in September – that’s a drop of almost 26%. By DappRadar’s count, that makes October the lowest month in 2022 so far for the number of NFT sales, after August with 7.3 million sales.

The best NFT projects in October, based on data from the analysis platform CryptoSlamincludes “blue chip” Ethereum mainstays such as Bored Ape Yacht Club, Hurt, and CryptoPunks. Long-term NFT play Estates Unchained-which runs on Ethereum scaling network Immutable X— also saw a surge in trading activity in October amid a retailer campaign GameStop.