The first half of 2022 was turbulent for the cryptocurrency market. Macroeconomic pressure, together with internal market events, significantly impacted all segments, including NFTs.
In view of this, the question remains: How will the NFTs market look from now on? Was it just a fad that won't survive the stress of the macro scenario?
We will present an overview of the NFTs market and discuss possible perspectives for the future of this segment.
After the 2021 boom, the NFTs market retreated a lot in terms of interest and volume.
According to Google Trends, the search for the term NFT greatly increased throughout 2021 and peaked in January 2022, when it began the downward trend sustained in part by media saturation and the onset of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
According to the NFT-500 index, created by Nansen, which tracks activity in the NFT market, trading volume in dollars has dropped 45% since the beginning of 2022.
The index is made up of 500 NFTs, weighted by market capitalization, and represents 85.14% of the daily market volume.
In the chart below (most recent), also from the Nansen index, it is possible to see that the trading volume remained low in June. It was the month with the lowest trading volume since the beginning of the year and the lowest level since July 2021.
OpenSea remains the leading marketplace for NFTs trading by volume and transactional amount. The platform accounted for over $6.7 billion of total trading volume in the first half of 2022.
However, the leading NFT trading platform has seen its share wane with the emergence of alternative markets over the past few months, such as LooksRare and Solana's Magic Eden.
Many of the blue-chip collections have seen drastic drops in value over the past few months, such as the Bored Ape (BAYC) collection, which has seen a 60% drop in floor price since late April.
However, the collectibles sector is still in the spotlight more and more, still led by the Bored Ape Yacht Club, which reigns supreme in the segment with more than $1.2 billion traded in the last quarter despite the sharp drop in the floor price.
With over 500,000 active wallets and a total turnover of over $6 billion, the collectibles segment was undoubtedly the top segment of the NFTs industry in the first half of 2022.
The gaming segment remained the segment with the largest community (almost one million active wallets).
The Metaverse segment, despite the hype, remains relatively small compared to the rest of the NFT industry, with $365 million traded.
According to Nansen, in the last quarter, the market capitalization of NFTs linked to social interactions registered the highest growth. In contrast, NFTs from games, art, and the metaverse all declined.
In short, if we had to present the panorama of the last few months in three points:
However, the NFTs will have a chance to prove the strength of the segment. The tendency is that at this moment, those who present an innovative proposal and who provide real interactions to their holders are consolidated.
The momentum of the crypto market and the global macro scenario will require even more resilience, as NFTs are not a separate sector and tend to continue to be heavily impacted by the macro context.
Given this, the question remains: Are NFTs a passing fad, or do they actually offer the long-awaited online breakthrough in favor of creator creativity? Or is it a game played with just a few super-rich winners?
I continue to believe that NFTs are here to stay and that many people will still experience in practice what it is like to interact with audiences and produce content via Non-Fungible Tokens.
