NFT report: a fast growing market

The latest quarterly report from blockchain data analytics firm Nansen, highlights the outstanding performance of the NFT market, which has outperformed the cryptocurrency market since the start of the year, with social NFTs and metaverse leading that growth.

NFT report: market outperforms cryptocurrencies

The market fell quite sharply in February 2022, but the last 30 days have seen a decisive turnaround. The NFT market has continued to outperform the cryptocurrency market since the start of the year, returning 103.7% when denominated in ETH and 82.1% when denominated in USD.

Going into more detail on the fastest-growing sectors, the report showed that the metaverse is the driver, with a year-to-date return of 129.4%. The index also showed a slight decline in land and real estate NFTs, while Avatar and Utilities NFTs increased.

While the gaming and art sectors are the ones that would have suffered the biggest decline, the gaming 50 index recorded a sharper decline especially for the play-to-earn category.

“The NFT segment of the cryptocurrency market is fast-growing and dynamic and has proved to resonate with retail investors over the past year, with significant growth in Q1 of 2022”,

commented Louisa Choe, Research Analyst at Nansen.

“As more artists, creators, builders, and community members innovate with the NFT market we believe we will see a rebalancing of which sectors become its driving force”.

A month ago, a report was released by Non-fungible, the leading analytics and data company on the NFT market, in collaboration with BNP Paribas’ Atelier, a company of the French bank specializing in technology and digital assets. 

2021 was a record year for NFTs

The report undoubtedly showed that 2021 was the year of a real boom in the NFT market, with a 21,350% increase in the volume traded in USD and a 1,836% increase in the number of sales made. 

In detail, the company points out that the trading volume in the art sector exceeded $2.7 billion, the games sector exceeded $5 billion and the collectibles and fan token world exceeded $8.4 billion in sales.

“2021 was a breakthrough year for NFTs in terms of the volume and value of transactions, the interest of mainstream brands, the emergence of new digital communities, and the tens of billions of dollars of funding that went into projects. We are, however, yet to see how much of that translates into real products and tangible value for users”,

said Nadya Ivanova, COO and head of foresight at L’Atelier BNP Paribas.