In November, the volume of the Ethereum NFT market hit a low point. Since then, trading volumes have been gradually climbing higher every week. Even though they’re far from the levels of the previous cycle, the trend is already evident.
A fierce battle is underway for the second most popular collection after CryptoPunks. Unlike most blue-chip collections, Pudgy Penguins have experienced growth over the past year and quadrupled in price since November — from 5 ETH to 20 ETH. They’re now closely approaching Bored Ape Yacht Club, trailing by only 2 ETH in value.
Yesterday, one of the biggest NFT deals in history was struck, with a collector acquiring ten Autoglyphs for 5,000 ETH (~$15 million). These artworks will be on display in museums.
ERC-404 tokens, which we wrote about earlier, and the core collection Pandora may also add to the upcoming hype.
Don’t forget about the NFTs of major projects, which are likely to be used as criteria for airdrops. For example, AltLayer distributed lots of coins to holders of its OG NFTs. And the free NFT Farcaster OG went up to 4-5 ETH amid expectations of a possible airdrop.
We might be in for a trend of airdrops for holders of blue-chip NFT collections, just like DYM gave away tokens to Pudgy Penguins holders.
Blockchains specifically built for NFTs, such as Zora (OP Stack) and Rari Chain (Arbitrum Orbit), are also being developed. These, like other appchains, aim to optimize the trading and issuance of NFTs with very low gas fees.
To sum up, NFTs undoubtedly have a future, both speculative and fundamental. But it remains to be seen which trend in the NFT world will take off stronger.
Read More