More than $10.7 billion in NFTs were sold between July and September, according to statistics from analytics websites.
Digital artwork, memes, game items, and collectibles have sold like hot cakes over the past three months, so much so that they made headlines at Reuters.
The report, citing figures from DappRadar, said the huge number for the third quarter was up from $1.3 billion in the second quarter and $1.2 billion in the first. The numbers may be higher because they do not include off-chain transactions such as those made by auction houses.
NonFungible, which only tracks NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain, puts the total volume for 2021 at $7 billion.
The open sea and axes lead the way
OpenSea dominated the NFT market in terms of trade volume. Since most of the NFTs are based on the Ethereum ERC-721 standard, they have also been responsible for recording transaction fees in recent months.
Etherscan reports that the platform is the top gas generator on Ethereum, with 22.5% of the total share over the past 24 hours. It has generated 2,189 ETH or $7.3 million in network fees since the same time yesterday. In fact, OpenSea passes more gases than Uniswap and Tether combined.
DappRadar currently reports that OpenSea has handled $2.75 billion in NFT sales over the past 30 days.
More than half of the NFTs sold during this period were between $101 and $1,000, and about 20% were in the $1,011 to $10,000 denomination, according to NonFungible.
US-based NFT project that sells algorithmically generated digital artwork called Art Blocks saw impressive growth for the quarter. However, the “play-to-earn” metaverse Axie Infinity was the largest seller of NFT to date, with more than $2.2 billion sold, according to CryptoSlam.
The NFT rating website reports that there are currently about 2 million Axie owners. According to DappRadar, Axie Infinity generated $776 million in third-quarter revenue.
NFT Fever pays AXS to ATH
The gaming platform launched staking incentives for its original AXS tokens last week, sending the price to an all-time high of $156 on October 4.
At the time of writing, AXS is trading at $137, up 115% over the past seven days and 825% over the past three months, according to CoinGecko.
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