Market Growth Slows in Q2, Polygon Continues Strong Momentum from Last Quarter
As of the end of Q2 2023, the total transaction volume of the NFT market has reached 66.55 billion US dollars, an increase of more than 10.9% compared to Q1. Looking at the overall market landscape, Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, and BNB Chain together account for about 99.6% of the market share in the second quarter. Among them, Ethereum’s total transaction volume has increased compared to Q1, reaching 64.38 billion US dollars. Although its market share is as high as 96.7%, it has decreased by about 0.6% compared to the first quarter. Next is Solana, with a transaction volume of about 1.04 billion US dollars, an increase of about 11.3% from the previous quarter, accounting for nearly 1.6% of the market share. Polygon and BNB Chain followed closely, with a combined market share of more than 1.3%. Polygon’s transaction volume has doubled compared to Q1, especially in May, which accounted for 62.7% of its total Q2 growth. BNB Chain only increased by about 3.2% compared to Q1.
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Looking at the average daily transaction volume, the overall second quarter is about 7.277 million US dollars, which is slightly lower than the previous quarter. Among them, Ethereum’s average daily transaction volume increased by more than 10.2% compared to the previous quarter, reaching 7.153 million US dollars; Solana remained unchanged from Q1, at 11.635 million US dollars; Polygon’s average daily transaction volume was 656,000 US dollars, an increase of about 27.6%; BNB Chain’s daily transaction volume was only 343,000 US dollars, a decrease of 21.6% from the first quarter.
Looking at the speed of market expansion, Polygon continues its strong momentum from last quarter, forming a significant lead with a transaction volume growth rate of 96.3%, followed closely by Solana at 13.5%, while Ethereum and BNB Chain only achieved single-digit growth. Except for Polygon, the transaction volume growth of other chains is far lower than that of the first quarter.
While the trading volume of the NFT market has slightly increased, the number of users has not shown a significant increase, but the average number of NFT assets held by each wallet address has decreased significantly. In terms of user scale, the total number of NFT asset interaction wallet addresses in the second quarter exceeded 18.984 million, an increase of only 1.794 million from Q1, and the average holding asset was only 46, a decrease of about 33.1%. Among them, Polygon’s number of addresses increased by 10.479 million, an increase of only 6.8% from the previous quarter; BNB Chain’s number of addresses increased by 2.663 million, with a growth rate of about 49.8%, but the average holding asset decreased by as much as 79.4% from the previous quarter; Ethereum and Solana’s total number of addresses showed a negative growth trend, decreasing by 20.2% and 45.7%, respectively, and from the perspective of the wallet holding asset lower than the average value, Ethereum is lower than the average value, while Solana has decreased by more than 42.4% from the first quarter.
Meanwhile, the new NFT projects launched in the second quarter saw explosive growth, with an increase of about 80% compared to the previous quarter, adding a total of more than 1.077 million projects, and an average of about 12,000 new projects per day. BNB Chain saw a surge of 417,000 new projects, 9.5 times that of Q1, mainly from 197,000 in April, with an average of 4,637 new projects per day; followed by Polygon with 376,000 new projects, but only 30,000 more than the previous quarter, with an average of 4,184 new projects per day; Solana added 81,000 new projects, with an average daily growth rate of over 1074.8%; while Ethereum added only about 19,000 projects, with a negative daily growth rate.
In addition, looking at the amount of new minting, more than 110 million NFT assets were minted this quarter, with a growth rate of over 15.1%, and a daily average of 1.264 million new mintings. Among them, Polygon ranked first with more than 55.571 million mintings, accounting for 50.5% of the total, a decrease from the previous quarter, with a daily average of 617,000 mintings; followed by BNB Chain, with more than 20.342 million new mintings, accounting for 18.4% of the total, a growth of 24.8% from the previous quarter, and a daily average of nearly 226,000 mintings; Ethereum and Solana had 9.179 million and 2.488 million mintings, respectively, with daily average mintings down more than 31.1% and 40% from the previous quarter.
Blue-chip NFTs experience capital outflows, which Ethereum gas consumer holds the most weight?
As the leading blue-chip NFTs affecting market trends and popularity, they continued to face sustained price declines and accelerated loss of community consensus this quarter, and many blue-chip projects in particular dragged down the overall performance of the NFT market in Q2. In particular, the launch of Azuki’s new work Azuki Elemental not only drew community criticism, but also dealt a heavy blow to NFT market confidence.
Looking at the market performance of the top 10 representative projects on Ethereum in the second quarter, these blue-chip projects saw an average overall market value decline of 9.8% compared to the end of the first quarter. Among them, the market value of CryptoPunks, BAYC series, and CloneX saw significant declines, with an average decline of 35.9%, while Captainz and DeGods performed relatively well, and Azuki and Beans performed better than many blue-chip projects due to the Elemental presale qualifications being limited to holders of these two series.
Looking at the turnover of the head projects, although the overall turnover in this quarter has shown a growth trend compared with the first quarter, it has increased by about 41.3%, but it mainly comes from the surge of DeGods and Captainz, especially DeGods attracting high market popularity, and the turnover has increased by more than 195.8%. At the same time, compared with the previous quarter, most blue chip NFTs not only face the continuous weakness of trading volume, but also face capital outflows, and the overall transaction average price has fallen by about 9.9%. The decline of CryptoPunks, BAYC series, CloneX and Pudgy Penguins is higher than the average level.
Meanwhile, Gas consumption is one of the “touchstones” for judging the activity of applications. The “big customers” of the Top 10 NFT Gas consumption in the second quarter consumed more than 11,000 ETH in total, of which XEN Torrent and Uniswap V3 Positions NFT-V1 are the main contributors, accounting for about 74.2% of the overall consumption, of which XEN Torrent’s gas consumption is the highest, about 2.3 times higher than the previous quarter.
In addition, the amount of project minting also grasps user preferences and emotional opportunities to a certain extent. The Top 10 Ethereum minting NFT projects minted more than 1.195 million NFTs in the second quarter, a decrease of 12% compared with Q1. Among them, mint.fun!fundrop Blockingss, ShapellaUpgrade and Stand with Crypto minted more than 627,000 NFTs.
Overall development of trading platforms slows down, and Blur still maintains high-speed growth
With the increasingly fierce market competition, major NFT trading markets are beginning to build competitive narratives around royalty reform, airdrop incentives, diversified functions, and the implementation of multi-chain markets. Perhaps the NFT market changes can be more directly perceived from the data of the six head trading markets.
From the total transaction volume, the six major trading platforms in the second quarter had a cumulative transaction volume of about 32.554 million ETH, an increase of only about 5.9% in this quarter. Among them, Blur’s transaction volume still ranks first with more than 35.083 million ETH, achieving a growth rate of 45.4%, mainly due to the opening of the second quarter airdrop and the opening of the lending market Blend on the platform; OpenSea, LooksRare and X2Y2 followed closely with 14.229 million ETH, 10.446 million ETH and 3.244 million ETH respectively, but these platforms only achieved single-digit growth in the second quarter.
Meanwhile, although the total sales volume of various NFT markets in the second quarter reached 41.998 million, it only increased by 6.8% compared to the previous quarter, with an average daily sales of about 30,000. Among them, OpenSea’s sales volume of 36.159 million became the absolute monopolist in the market, accounting for 86% of the overall, but it was lower than the overall growth rate, only increasing by 5%, and the daily average sales volume was 19,000; the sales volume of Blur was 3.541 million, and the growth rate was far higher than other platforms at 34.5%, with a daily average sales volume of 10,100; while the total sales volume of LooksRare, X2Y2, and CryptoPunks accounted for only 5.4% of the overall, and the daily average sales volume was only a small fraction of OpenSea’s.
Similarly, the user scale of the transaction market in the second quarter did not increase significantly, with only an increase of 2.697 million, and the daily average new address was only about 2.9. Among them, OpenSea added 1.975 million addresses, accounting for 73.2% of the total new additions, with a daily average of nearly 22,000 new addresses; Blur added 692,000 addresses, with a growth rate of 36.2%, and a daily average of 7,695.7 new addresses; and the number of new addresses added by LooksRare, X2Y2, and CryptoPunks fell behind the average and only achieved single-digit growth.
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