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Analysts at the Nansen research company have announced that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have become a true mainstream of the cryptocurrency world in 2021. The experts stressed that the total sales of digital art objects reached $17 billion. According to them, the OpenSea trading platform at one point even surpassed Uniswap in terms of gas usage.
Experts noted several bursts of interest in NFT collections in May and August last year. The most active day was on August 29, when the total trading volumes exceeded $132 thousand Ethereum (more than $422 million).
Nansen CEO Alex Svanevik said that the interest in NFT was not caused by any one specific event, but by a whole series of various activities and events. He noted that the purchase of bitcoins was not as attractive to users as images of cartoon animals in digital JPEG format.
Svanevik emphasized that the OpenSea platform became the leader in gas consumption on the Ethereum network in September and October 2021. This is because the minting of NFTs mostly took place on this blockchain and the creators were forced to fall prey to the huge costs associated with it.
The network is the largest smart contract platform by market capitalization and total value locked (TVL) for decentralized applications (dapps). However, its economic disadvantage for users was noted. Other chains offered cheaper alternatives.
The company also noted a huge amount of aggressive marketing related to NFTs. Nansen specialists said that many projects sent their tokens to celebrity wallets to advertise themselves. For example, NBA star Stephen Curry has 1011 non-fungible tokens in his possession, but only 10 of them he bought himself.
According to Nansen representatives, 2022 will be marked by continued growth of interest in DeFi, NFT, cross-chain projects and the metaverse.
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