Your guide to Bitcoin, Ethereum and Web 3.0
More individual NFTs were sold on Polygon than Ethereum via leading marketplace OpenSea for the second consecutive month, according to public blockchain data curated via a Dune dashboard.
In January, OpenSea handled over 1.5 million NFT sales on Ethereum sidechain Polygon, while Ethereumits own main network summarized just over 1.1 million sales via the same marketplace. That continues the trend from December, when 1.3 million NFTs were sold on Polygon through OpenSea compared to just under 1 million Ethereum NFTs.
Ethereum has long been considered the premier blockchain for NFTs, hosting the majority of high-value projects – despite the sometimes high gas taxes. But as Polygon continues to forge big brand deals with big names like Meta, Starbucksand Redditand as more game projects tap the scaling network, more and more assets are traded on the sidechain.
While Ethereum is merging—which was completed in September—reduced the power grid’s energy consumption by 99.998%, it did not solve the problem of network gas charges, which can sometimes exceed the base price of the asset itself. A gas fee is a cost that the Ethereum network charges users to complete a transaction.
In contrast, polygon and layer-1 like Ethereum rivals Solana and Avalanche offer exponentially lower fees for user transactions, and in turn have become increasingly known for hosting more affordable NFT collections.
According to OpenSea, the best Polygon NFT collection in January overall was the controversial one Donald Trump digital trading cardwhich saw nearly 5,500 sales across all Polygon marketplaces, equating to 1,743 ETH (almost $2.8 million) in trading volume.
But when it comes to Polygon collections with the highest number of sales on any marketplace beyond just OpenSea, Planet IX notched approximately 5 million sales in the past 30 days, while Sunflower country total 1 million sales, Mocaverse so 42,000 sales, and Lympo athletes accumulated about 37,000 sales in the last month.
It is worth noting that most of these sales are for affordable assets to be used in metaverse worlds or Web3 game. In some cases, such as with Sunflower Land and Planet IX, NFT assets are sold for ETH money, significantly reducing the average selling price of polygon-based NFTs over this time period.
While Polygon surpassed Ethereum in the total number of sales, Ethereum still sees significantly more value traded overall. On OpenSea, Ethereum saw roughly $446 million in total traded volume in January, while Polygon NFT sales totaled just $15.4 million. With about 1.5 million NFT sales on Polygon, that makes an average sale price around $10.
Notably, this is not the first time that the total number of monthly Polygon NFT sales has topped Ethereum. Dune shows a similar peak in late 2021 and early 2022, but then the number of Polygon sales fell sharply until the recent recovery.
The most expensive and attractive NFTs (like Bored Ape Yacht Club) still reside on Ethereum, which drives significantly more trading volume than Polygon. But the sidechain network is seeing traction as a destination for NFT games and affordable collectibles – which could help wider NFT adoption by reaching a much larger audience.
