January was the best month for token prices in almost a year, with ETH, BTC, and altcoins making their sharpest gains since July. Naturally, this led to increased volume and market cap in the NFT industry.
Some metrics were predictable, like the number of investment rounds closed continuing to slide. The breakdown of NFT volume by chain has stayed the same, with Ethereum still the go-to chain for NFTs, followed distantly by Solana and Polygon.
However, other developments were both significant and unexpected. Whereas during the bull market, analysts and experts debated whether LooksRare or another marketplace would overtake OpenSea, NFT aggregators have become the dominant force in the industry. While we covered the emergence of these platforms last November, a new aggregator, Blur, has taken the sector by storm, becoming a leading player.
ETH increased from the low-$1,200s zone at the end of December to a January high of $1,660.
Going by token prices, January was a nice reprieve after a year of significant downward pressure created by macroeconomic conditions and compounded by a string of collapses in crypto.
The market cap of NFTs grew from $13B in December to $20B in January.
This was its largest monthly increase since July. For reference, the ATH of NFTs was $41B last April. The average per day was $18.9B.
Since November, the volume of NFT trading has been steadily increasing, reaching $989.9M in January.
NFT Volume by Chain (with Wash Trading Filtered)
There were more weekly NFTs users at the end of the month than ever since January and February 2022, reaching its apex at 127,887 weekly users on Jan 27.
The ATH for this metric was Feb. 2, 2022, with 132,139
The market share per chain for volume remained almost the same as previous months.
NFT Volume by Chain (with Wash Trading Filtered)
Ethereum remained far ahead in the lead, followed by Solana and Polygon.
LookRare was the second most profitable NFT marketplace after OpenSea, generating $553M in platform fees
Previously, many attributed LooksRare’s success entirely to wash trading. While much of the platform’s activity in prior months was not genuine, more recent analytics show that it is a strong competitor to OpenSea with real trading.
Aggregator platforms have become the go-to places to buy NFTs, and Blur has become the leader in this field
Blur Aggregator Daily Trading NFTs by marketplace (share)
The NFT category continued witnessing a drop in closed rounds MoM, with 7 compared to December’s 5.
Investment by Category (Jan. NFT Report)
On the other hand, across the entire blockchain industry, January was the first in seven months that saw an increase in the number of rounds closed in the blockchain industry (74 compared to December’s 54.) Candy Digital, a sports NFT firm, closed the largest round with a $38M Series A.
This piece is contributed by Footprint Analytics community.
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