NFT Trading Volume Fell 35% In Q2 2023 – Will Q3 Brings An Uptrend?

Updated: 18 July 2023

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The world of non-fungible tokens has continued to plunge after the initial market hype that followed their popularity. Late in 2021 and earlier last, the NFT flourished, with many crypto assets and NFTs reaching their record highs. Since June 2022, the NFT market has suffered a brutal comedown.

NFT Trading Vol Fell 35% In Q2

Data compiled by CoinGecko, an on-chain data aggregator, indicates that the global non-fungible token market has continued to record negative gains despite some new forms of NFTs, such as Bitcoin ordinals and Ethscriptions, rising massively in popularity.

Bitcoin NFTs, popularly known in the crypto industry as Ordinals, came into the spotlight sometime earlier this year after Bitcoin developer Casey Radarmor inscribed some NFTs using Satoshi ordinal theory, the anonymous creator of Bitcoin crypto asset.

Ethscriptions made inroads into the NFT market a few months ago. These new forms of NFTs on Ethereum were inspired by Bitcoin ordinals. In recent weeks, Inscriptions have gained traction among NFT investors. According to Dune analytics, there are more than 474,000 Descriptions and nearly 18 million Ordinals today.

Despite their rise in popularity and traction, NFT trading sales volume has continued to plunge, falling from $4.84 billion in the first quarter of 2023 to $3.15 billion in the second quarter of this year. The market decline equated to 35%.

During this period, Ethereum remained the dominant platform for NFT trading, capturing 83.0% of the volume. However, its dominance temporarily decreased to 73.3% in May 2023. This shift occurred as Bitcoin Ordinals gained popularity and accounted for nearly 20.3% of the NFT trading volume during that month.

In the second quarter of 2023, Solana experienced the most significant decrease in trading volume, suffering a decline of 78.6% from $184.91 million in Q1 to $39.66 million in Q2. This decline can be attributed, in part, to the migration of major Solana collections, DeGods, and y00ts to Ethereum and Polygon, respectively.

NFT Sales Fell 7% This Week

Data analysis shows that the non-fungible token market is still down this week in terms of trading sales volume. In the past seven days, the NFT market has recorded a trading sales volume of $137 million, representing a 7% fall from the previous week.

NFT sales: Source: CryptoSlam.io

Nonetheless, the NFT market has seen a sharp rise in the number of traders participating in the market. The global NFT space has recorded a spike of 118% in NFT buyers. Ethereum NFTs continue to dominate the NFT market, recording a trading sales volume of $85 million.

Bitcoin ordinals have distantly followed Ethereum NFTs, attracting a trading sales volume of $16 million. Non-fungible tokens hosted on Solana emerge third this week, amassing a sales volume of $7 million. In the past seven days, Bitcoin NFTs and Solana NFTs have declined by 48% and 17 %, respectively.