BAYC Leads the Pack as NFT Sales Bounce Back in New Year

Bouncing back after months of declining prices and waning interest, NFT sales volume has started the new year off strong, data shows.

In the week ending Jan. 7, NFT sales increased by 26%, led by frontrunning project Bored Ape Yacht Club, which saw a 53% week-over-week increase, according to data compiled by CryptoSlam. 

Ethereum was the most popular blockchain by sales volume, accounting for $164 million of the total $209 million in sales completed over the week.

Even after its two most valuable NFT projects, DeGods and y00ts, announced plans to move to Ethereum and Polygon, respectively, Solana saw its NFT sales grow by nearly 30% last week, per the data.

Dust Labs, the startup behind both DeGods and y00ts, said it received a $3 million grant from Polygon to move blockchains.

“This shows the resilience of the Solana NFT community, providing optimism for SOL token holders,” Marcus Sotirious, market analyst at GlobalBlock, said in a note Monday.

News of the move, which is slated to occur later this quarter, was not initially well received by much of the community, Galaxy researchers noted in a December report.

“​​The Solana NFT community has been divided in response,” Galaxy analysts wrote. “While some in the community applaud the move as a smart business decision, others have expressed frustration at the fact that Frank [DeGods/y00ts founder Rohun Vohra] is abandoning Solana precisely when it’s trading at its lowest levels since early 2021.”

Solana’s native token SOL has emerged as a top performing coin of 2023 after ending 2022 94% lower against the dollar. As of Monday afternoon in New York, SOL was up more than 50% in the past seven days.

Even with increasing volumes, NFT collectors are still a relatively niche group, data shows, with 400,748 NFT buyers last week making a collective 1.2 million transactions. For scale, the Bitcoin blockchain currently handles around 1.75 million transactions per week.

The NFT market locked in around $24.7 billion in trading volume across blockchains and marketplaces in 2022, according to data from DappRadar, a decrease from 2023, which saw $25.1 billion in total volume.

2022’s slowdown was primarily concentrated in the second half of the year. In the third quarter of 2022, NFT sales dropped 60% from the previous quarter, DappRadar data shows.

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