OpenSea adds Avalanche NFT support

Avalanche has entered the chat.

OpenSea has added NFTs from the Avalanche blockchain to its online marketplace, the company announced on Tuesday.

The market place – which looked about 350 million dollars in Ethereum NFT volume traded last month – now supports NFTs from seven different blockchains: EthereumPolygon, Klaytn, Solana, Optimism, Arbitrationand now Avalanche.

Avalanche is an open source network with the original token AVAX and three different blockchains, one of which is called C chain. The C chain is optimized for Ethereum compatibility and smart contractswhich NFTs use (NFTs can exist on Avalanche’s C-Chain or X-Chain).

While OpenSea’s announcement is good news for Avalanche NFT fans, it remains to be seen whether the increased visibility will strengthen the blockchain’s NFT economy. Some Avalanche supporters might call it a “Ethereum killer,” but when it comes to NFTs, Avalanche has barely made a dent.

According to CryptoSlam dataAvalanche saw $2.4 million in total NFT volume traded in September across roughly 25,000 transactions and just 4,488 buyers.

To put that into perspective, Solana — which launched around the same time as Avalanche — looked almost 130 million dollars total traded NFT volume last month over almost 3 million transactions and 143,000 buyers. That means Solana processed around 193% more NFT-related funds than Avalanche in September and boasts 187% more users trading NFTs.

While the Avalanche NFT economy is small, it seems to lean into that fact. According to OpenSea’s rankings, Avalanche’s two best NFT collections of all time are “Smol Joes” and “Smol Lands”. “Smol Apas” and “Smol Creeps” also make the top ten list.

But let’s not forget the “Smol Turds”, who jumped on the poo-themed Ethereum NFT trend this summer. intentionally ugly and crude art.

Despite coining back in July with the slogan “Turd is love. Turd is life,” the minimum purchase price for “Smol Turds” has skyrocketed 996% in the last 24 hours. At the time of writing, one Smol Turd NFT will set you back around 200 AVAX, which is about $3,200.

The Avalanche NFT market also pumped up a bit earlier this year with the Crabada game and Yield Hunt Hunters, which have taken in $227 million and $81 million respectively since their launches.

While meme-based NFTs currently dominate the landscape, Ava Labs’ business development manager Dominic Carbonaro believes Avalanche’s NFT creators are just getting started.

“Avalanche’s NFT community has a unique identity and passion for experimenting with both the art and use of NFTs,” Carbonaro said in a statement. “The creators here are still only scratching the surface.”

While OpenSea isn’t the first NFT marketplace to offer Avalanche NFTs, OpenSea’s Avalanche-backed competitors aren’t exactly seeing numbers. The Avalanche NFT economy is spread across five marketplaces, the largest of which is dedicated to Chikn NFTs—a collection of chicks holding guns, smoking pipes, or wearing Ethereum bling.

According to Dune datacompeting NFT marketplaces NFTrade, Kalao, Campfire and JoePegs each see only a few hundred unique daily users trading on Avalanche.

Maybe OpenSea will send Avalanche NFTs to the big leagues – or maybe not.