NFT sales drop 16% to less than $122 million: What Happened?

This week marked a significant downturn for the non-fungible token (NFT) market, which saw sales drop by almost 16% off the back of a 17% surge in the previous week. 

Per CryptoSlam, total sales hit $121.7 million, with more than 519,000 buyers and sellers actively trading.

Blockchain NFT sales breakdown

The Ethereum (ETH) network led the charge with $39.28 million in sales, a notable 14.48% increase from the previous week. 

This surge was accompanied by a marked increase in the number of active buyers on Ethereum’s NFT space, with the number going up nearly 48% to reach 23,586. The network also saw an increase in wash trading, up 35.49% to over $34 million.

Bitcoin (BTC), which was the busiest network in terms of sales in the previous week, dropped to second place this week, with about $26.5 million in sales, representing a 45.60 drop. Bitcoin recorded over 18,000 active buyers, which was a whopping 804% increase from last week. Wash trading on the network decreased by about 53%, settling at $20,030.

After a 22% boost in sales in the previous week, this week saw Polygon (MATIC) shave nearly 5.5% off its weekly sales volume to settle at $18.43 million. Solana (SOL) stayed in fourth with $14.631 million in sales, an 18.18% decrease. On its part, Immutable X (IMX) saw a surge, with sales increasing by 9.40%.

Top NFT sales

The highest sale of the week was from the Ethereum blockchain, with an NFT selling for $587,194. A Bitcoin Ordinal, Protoshroom #6, changed hands for $237,373, while a Polygon TTAvatars #128003 fetched $100,500. 

Solana’s DeezNode #052 sold for $77,839, edging out a BNB NFT, Ape Treasury Bill V2 V3 #12668, which sold for $31,516.

Among collections, Immutable’s Guild of Guardians Avatars had the highest sales volume of the last seven days, raking in more than $8.1 million in 1,614 transactions.

Bitcoin’s PIZZA NFTs followed, generating $7.3 million, which was a drastic 60% reduction on its numbers from the previous week. 

A new entrant in the top five collections ranked by sales volume was the Ethereum Name Service (ENS), which secured third spot with more than $5.3 million worth of NFTs sold. The figure represented an incredible 1022% jump, with the money coming from just 295 buyers. 

The DMarket collection on Mythos earned $4.6 million from nearly 190,000 transactions, while Bitcoin Puppets from the Bitcoin network earned the #5 spot with about $2.7 million in sales.