Morning Minute | NFT Trading Grinds to a Halt
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Take a minute to catch up on the latest in the Web3 space with today's NFT market analysis, top movers, and upcoming mints:
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TylerD's Market Summary
NFT trading on ETH is at its lowest levels in month. Let's take a look at just how bad it is and the impact on prices.
๐ NFT Traders Leave in Droves
Does it feel a bit quieter out there on NFT Twitter or in the market?
Well, that's because there aren't many people left.
Unique daily traders, daily NFT sales, and overall trading volume on ETH are all at their lowest levels in several months.
Just how bad is it?
The Numbers
A few metrics that indicate the state of the market, from this handy Sealaunch Dune dashboard:
- Daily trading volume on Saturday: 7,714 ETH (down 90% from Feb highs)
- Daily unique users: 3,881 (down 87% from Feb highs)
- Daily unique sales: 8,312 (down 93% from Feb highs)
So this is a full 90% retrace from local highs in February after Blur farming began in full swing.
In fact, Blur users, sales and volume are all down from pre-incentive levels.
Blur paying people millions of dollars of day to simply trade NFTs (via their token incentives) has led to traders leaving in droves.
It's hard to imagine that this would be the consequences of that set of incentives, yet here we are.
Unique users below 4,000 is pretty astonishing, and it's likely even worse as the people left are likely using multiple wallets - so the true unique user count is probably closer to 2,000-2,500.
Market Impact
Let's take a look at a basket of top NFTs and see how they performed over the last 30 days.
Floor price and 30-day change below:
- Punks: 54 ETH (-6%)
- Fidenza: 54 ETH (-17%)
- BAYC: 47.1 ETH (-20%)
- Azuki: 15.1 ETH (+6%)
- MAYC: 10.8 ETH (-17%)
- Squiggles: 8.87 ETH (-8%)
- Captainz: 6.89 ETH (+5%)
- Pudgy Penguins: 4.3 ETH (+1%)
- DigiDaigaku Genesis: 2.88 ETH (-36%)
- CloneX: 2.75 ETH (-4%)
- Doodles: 2.57 ETH (-8%)
- Moonbirds: 2.35 ETH (-27%)
- Otherdeeds: 1.15 ETH (-24%)
So most of the major, high-volume NFT sets and notable art projects are down another 10-20% on the month.
The Yuga eco was hit especially hard, with its major NFTs down 17-24%.
The few bright spots that stand out - Azuki, Captainz and Pudgy Penguins. Pay attention to these (if you're still around).
The price of ETH is effectively even on the month, so it's not a USD repricing causing this price action.
What are the drivers then?
The Drivers
A combination of memecoin mania, consistently high daily gas prices, and Blur market manipulation by whales seem to be the big drivers of the exodus, in some order.
In the past few weeks we have seen several instances (in the PFP market) of whales driving up floors by sweeping hundreds of NFTs, and then turning around and dumping them all within hours or day.
While not necessarily the Blur team's fault, this kind of manipulation has been the final straw for a lot of traders who are simply on the sidelines waiting for a more normalized market.
Then there's gas. To do basic transactions on the Ethereum network in the past week has cost anywhere from 0.03 to 0.06 ETH ($55 to $110) or higher.
Those kind of fees make traders second-guess making moves and many are simply opting not to transact.
And last, the reason gas is so high is because of all the memecoin trading going on.
$PEPE was officially listed on Binance on Friday, setting off a whirlwind weekend.
The popular frog coin hit around a $1.8B marketcap at peak Friday morning mania, before retracing to $977M this morning.
Perhaps the craziest stat though - $940M.
That's how much trading volume $PEPE did in the past 24 hours, enough to make it the 8th-ranked crypto by volume on the day.
For reference, Dogecoin did just $311M on that timeframe, so $PEPE 3x'd it.
For additional perspective, NFTs on ETH saw just $454M in non-wash trading volume in the past month (according to cryptoslam data). So $PEPE did more volume on the day than NFTs have in the past month.
As long as memecoin mania keeps going, it seems most NFT traders will opt to play in that casino.
The question is - how long will it last?
I'm done trying to predict it myself, but my gut is that things may just be getting started.
Which means this NFT summer might feel more like a winter.
๐ What else is happening in NFTs?
Here is the list of other notable headlines from the weekend in NFTs:
- Trading volume was just over 10.5k ETH on Sunday, as most NFTs fall 1-3%
- Pudgy Penguins announced a new deal to be represented by talent agency WME to help make the brand a household name
- Memeland teased its $MEME tokenomics, including 69% distribution for the community, capitalizing on peak memecoin mania
- Blur is adding a new collection to its Blend program today, with speculation of anything from DeGods to BAYC to even Nakamigos (unlikely)
- OnChainMonkey shared new details on how to secure spots on its !RISE list ahead of their upcoming Bitcoin mint
๐ Around Crypto and Web3
A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:
- The crypto market fell on Sunday; BTC -3% at $27,9600; ETH -2% at $1,860
- $PEPE fell 17% to $977M marketcap on the day, its first time below the $1B mark since the Binance listing was confirmed; $TURBO fell 46% to $77M after a huge weekend run touching $200M
- Bitcoin fees have spiked as over 11,000 tokens have been created and traded on Bitcoin as BRC-20s surge
๐ NFT Total Volume
- MAYC (2,577 ETH, 10.8 ETH Floor)
- Azuki (847 ETH; 15.09 ETH)
- BAYC (706 ETH, 47.1 ETH)
- DeGods (703 ETH, 8.43 ETH)
- Milady (678 ETH, 3.64 ETH)
๐ NFT Floor Price Increase
- Checks - VV Editions (38%, 0.44 ETH Floor)
- Killabears (12%, 2.06 ETH)
- ALTs by adidas (9%, 0.27 ETH)
- Mocaverse (6%, 0.68 ETH)
- Azuki (3%, 15.09 ETH)
๐ Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals
The week looks to be off to an unsurprisingly slow start.
There is a new meme card drop (pending gas, because Friday's was postponed) and a new Art Blocks drop.
The AB drop is from Curated artist Samsy, with 255 NFTs launching at 0.23 ETH. Given Samsy's Curated drop "Jiometory No Compute" is at a 0.24 ETH floor, it's hard to see this new one minting out. But take a look if you like the art.
- Memes by 6529 (11:00 a.m. ET); 0.06529 ETH
- Fushi No Reality - ใใทใใฒใณใธใ by Samsy (1:00 p.m. ET); 0.23 ETH
- Floor App - Solana support (TBD)
Enjoy this write-up? Follow along with me on Twitter @tyler_did_it or reach out via email tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.
For all volume and floor price data, see Lucky Trader's Project Rankings page.
For all upcoming mints, see Lucky Trader's Project Schedule page.
