There are now a total of 80,300 NFT collections on the Ethereum blockchain, up from 15,540 year over year. Meanwhile, Ethereum addresses holding one or more NFTs have also skyrocketed as the industry is getting widely adopted, despite the recent market turbulence in the crypto space.
Interest in NFTs continues to grow
Although the broader crypto market has been on a downward trend for months since November 2021, the excitement associated with NFT activities has shown consistent strength.
According to the data collected by IntoTheBlock, a blockchain intelligence firm dedicated to on-chain analysis, the number of NFT collections on the Ethereum network has increased by over 100% in 2022. Compared to the number recorded a year ago, with only around 15.5K collections available, more than 80K NFTs are now on the network.
Meanwhile, the total volume traded by NFTs has also increased significantly over the past year, with daily volume just $622 million a year ago, increasing nearly 90x to the current level. approximately $54.58 billion per day.
In terms of Ethereum addresses holding at least 1 NFT, the surge of interest has been conspicuous since September 2020. Also, only 1.4% of the wallets held 1+ NFTs a year ago, but the number now has gone up to 4.64%.
Among all Ethereum-based NFT collections, BoredApeYachtClub still reigns as the most valuable NFT project, held by 6,422 addresses, with its market capitalization reaching 1.05M ETH, or $3.18 billion. CryptoPunks and MutantApeYachtClub are the second and third largest NFT series by valuation, respectively, worth 471.43K ETH and 456.23K ETH.
Solana as a New Home for NFT Collections
Though the most popular NFTs still exist on the Ethereum blockchain, Solana-based digital collections have recently caught up and garnered immense attention. In Solana, transaction costs are usually less than a dollar. Many NFT projects and collectors have migrated to its blockchain for scalability and cheap transaction costs.
At the end of January, the sales volume in the ecosystem crossed the $1 billion mark. Degenerate Ape Academy, an extremely popular collection of 10,000 unique NFT monkeys only available on the Solana blockchain, recorded its highest sale for a single monkey at $1.1 million in September 2021.
