Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg announced that social media giant Facebook would be changing its name to Meta, or rather, Meta Platforms, Inc. The face-melting price pumps experienced by $MANA, $SAND, $APE, and, well - everything - in the weeks that followed signified the very tippy-top of this market cycle for NFTs, the metaverse, and P2E. While the recent decline of risk-on asset prices obviously has much to do with macroeconomic factors, and though we know this industry will be trending towards all-time highs again in a couple short years, current statistics make it clear that this road back to the top will be a long and painful one.
In the midst of a US recession, only these three NFT marketplaces continue to do over half a million dollars in daily trading volume (via DappRadar):
OpenSea
Built on the Ethereum blockchain, OpenSea is the first and the largest p2p NFT marketplace. In fact, DappRadar ranks it as the 13th largest dApp (decentralized application) of any kind in existence, based on number of users. This includes industry leaders like DEXes and P2E games. Though OpenSea has a high barrier to entry in the form of Ethereum gas, which will only increase in uptrends, they aim to position themselves to keep leading the industry by increasing incorporation of the Polygon network and Solana blockchain.
X2Y2
Capitalizing on the weaknesses of OpenSea, X2Y2 aims to be a truly decentralized NFT marketplace. Launched only half a year ago, they are already positioning themselves to be highly competitive in this space and have grown exponentially in their short time despite the downwards market trend. In July, they incentivized users to remain active by offering 100% trading fee rebates on all NFT collections, which is unheard of on the Ethereum blockchain. Only time will tell how much this marketplace will grow and innovate.
CryptoPunks
Barely earning its spot on this list, with a 24h volume of $546 thousand as reported by DappRadar, CryptoPunks is widely regarded as the first ever NFT collection. Launched by Larva Labs, they have their own dApp and have broken basically every record a single collection can break. This is because CryptoPunks is not just an "NFT collection," but a piece of digital history. Larva Labs and CryptoPunks aren't going anywhere.
Conclusion
NFTs had such ridiculous trading volumes and sold prices over a few separate periods all within the last 18 months that the entire world took notice. Movie stars and pro athletes had BAYC profile pictures on Twitter and even adult film actresses were launching their own NFT collections. Today, we hear the word "recession" far more than "NFT," and most of the world has forgotten what once was, writing this market off as another fad or Ponzi scheme of the past. While only the above three marketplaces maintain a 24h trading volume over half a million USD in this harsh winter, I have no doubt that NFTs will shock the world again in due time.
If you derived any value from this article, I would appreciate a tip, as they are free. Thanks for reading and best of luck financially surviving NFT winter.
