NFT Sales Slumps in Q3 2022 as OpenSea Dominance Fades

While NFT marketplace OpenSea still lead in terms of users and volume, other marketplaces are steadily gaining ground, according to a new study by Binance Market Pulse.

OpenSea, the research says, is now facing fierce competition from two other Ethereum-based marketplaces – X2Y2 and Looksrare. The closest competitor, however, is Magic Eden, the major NFT marketplace on the Solana blockchain. The research describes the competition as “very close,” as displayed by the graph below:

The data, however, shows that NFT sales dropped 73% in the third quarter. Both primary and secondary sales were down, and there was a stark underperformance of sales when compared to Q1 and Q2 2022.

However, there is resilience when it comes to unique buyers of NFT. There is a slight increase in the number of unique buyers at the start of Q3 2022.

This is demonstrated by total number of NFT transactions, which picked up in September of this year after steadily declining month after month since January.

The Binance report echoes the report from Dune Analytics, which declared NFT Market Volume dropping 97 percent from 2022 highs. 

The market trading volume of NFTs has dropped by 97% in 9 months as a result of the still ongoing bear market that began earlier this year. According to Dune Analytics, the value has dropped from $17 billion in January 2022 to $466 million in September. Before collapsing alongside the start of the crypto winter, weekly trade volume peaked in April 2022 at an all-time high of $146.3 billion.

Still, there’s a lot of enthusiasm around the world of NFTs. Locally, in particular, collectors and enthusiasts rejoiced as social networking site Reddit announced that its users have collectively opened 2.5 million crypto wallets to buy NFT avatars. This potentially means Reddit has more NFT users than Opensea. Reddit partnered with 30 independent artists to create 40,000 NFT avatars on the Polygon blockchain.

Locally, the head of UBX – Erica Dizon-Go is confident that NFT adoption would continue to increase in the country. 

“You need to own something in order to be considered rich, and I think NFTs and digital assets start to democratize that for the general population,” she stated.

This article is published on BitPinas: NFT Sales Slumps in Q3 2022 as OpenSea Dominance Fades

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