OpenSea, one of the top NFT platforms, has seen trading volume drop by more than 90 percent since January
Data seems to confirm that last year’s NFT craze has come to an end. Online decentralized app hub DappRadar shows that daily traffic and sales volume on OpenSea – the most ubiquitous NFT platform of them all – has plummeted by shocking percentages since the site’s heyday.
As of January 27, 2022, OpenSea hosted nearly 55,000 users who performed over 110,000 transactions totaling $207 million. On August 29, a scant 25,000 users completed 56,400 transactions – generating just $12 million. This represents a 94 per cent decline in trading volume over nine months.
Fortune recently linked OpenSea’s decline to downward cryptocurrency trends. Bitcoin, a standard for serious investors, has fallen 57 percent since the start of 2022 and art world darling Ethereum has fallen 59 percent in the same time frame. Fortune also cited Bored Ape Yacht Club’s floor price, the lowest current cost for an Ape, as evidence of OpenSea’s demise. Per CoinGecko, BAYC’s floor price is currently 72 ETH – compared to the collection’s record high of 153 ETH in April.
Bits from the less contentious CryptoPunks project are also down 19 percent since their July highs, Fortune reported — even after Christie’s Noah Davis took the helm as brand chief, Bored Ape Yacht Club’s founders bought CryptoPunks and Meebits, and Tiffany’s signed on with a bejeweled collaboration .
A collection of CryptoPunks in OpenSea shown on a phone screen. Photo: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images.
An OpenSea spokesperson reached out to Fortune to offer a rebuttal, disagreeing with DappLabs’ decision to measure trade volumes in dollars, meaning the numbers fluctuate not only in the hands of user activity, but also with the fluctuating value of cryptocurrencies .
But as Fortune points out, by OpenSea’s preferred metric — ETH volume — trading is still down 62 percent from May to July, and is on track to fall further in August, per crypto-tracking platform Dune Analytics. In July, the platform also laid off 20 percent of its employees, leaving 230 employees.
“We’re playing the long game because we’re seeing what’s possible, so we’re not too concerned about short-term volatility,” OpenSea’s spokesperson also told Fortune. “We’ve always expected hype, hype and deflation as the community and use cases evolve, the technology becomes more sophisticated, and creators figure out how to build more utility into their projects.”
Some artists still see OpenSea’s value. Brooklyn-based David Henry Nobody Jr. has been recording his absurd performance art since the 1990s. He jumped on blockchain technology as a way to actually sell his recordings. The artist uses OpenSea together with another platform, Foundation.
“Foundation is somewhat curated, while OpenSea is free for all,” Nobody told Artnet News. But the Foundation does not allow the release of artwork in editions, so the artist relied on OpenSea this summer to release an edition of 99 works for 0.1 ETH each. “I sold a lot and the transaction and listing fees are quite low on the platform,” he said.
“I try to keep my biggest ticket items at Foundation and my more affordable pieces and editions at OpenSea,” Nobody added. So maybe it’s not the end of NFTs, but the end of one platform’s total dominance. We need more data to say for sure.
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