Insights to Ethereum NFT Primary Market 2022: Collectors & Creators
In this report, we present our insights on 2022 NFT landscape and showcase trending NFT projects in 2022.
NFTs have been one of the most dynamic and prominent parts of Web3 over the last two years. NFTs saw explosive growth in 2021, but this growth hasn’t been consistent and has leveled off so far in 2022. We will describe the NFT market in 2022 from the scale of NFT addresses, user activities, and collections.
A Look Back to NFT Market
Below, we’ll explore how the NFT primary market has grown and contracted since the beginning of 2017.
We can see a significant growth of active addresses from 2017 to 2022, especially in 2021, with the annual growth rate spiking to 359%, 2021 was the first year that NFT technology broke through into the mainstream, and the NFT scene has evolved rapidly. however, in 2022 the hype has dwindled. It seems that since last year, when the buzz around NFTs peaked, even though the NFT address is still increasing, people have been steadily losing interest in NFT compared to 2021.
The market size is small at the beginning, there were only a few creators and collections in the industry, however, with the familiarity of CrptoPunks, CryptoKitties more creators have entered the NFT market and in 2022, the NFT market becomes highly competitive, primarily due to the arrival of new creators and issuers.
As we can see, there are many more active addresses in the market than active collections, which indicates people still have high enthusiasm for NFT.
NFT Addresses
The NFT markets had approximately 783,187 active wallets in December 2021. At the end of November 2022 there were approximately 1,004,393 active wallets. Although this increase may not be significant, it remains relatively positive.
The new addresses remain relatively stable, with an incline in July 2022. And the existing addresses increase relatively stable in the first half of 2022 and fluctuated decrease in the second half of the year. However, even though NFT addresses growth has been erratic, it remains increasing throughout the year 2022.
We can see that the percentage of new addresses decline in 2022, from 52.7% in December 2021 to 37.8% in November 2022. Even though the percentage has fallen, the enthusiasm of new entrants for NFT remains.
NFT User Behavior
Since the beginning of 2022, NFT activities (mint, burn, and transfer) have grown significantly, but this growth fluctuates. NFT activity ebbs and flows month to month. in 2022 thus far, the NFT activities continued their growth since Dec 2021, spiked in July 2022, and entered a downturn in November 2022. We can also see that the majority of the activities are minting, and it varies with the total activity.
Though the broader crypto market has been on a months-long downtrend dating back to November 2021, the enthusiasm associated with NFTs activities has shown consistent strength, more than half of the NFT activity is minting. The frequency of minting activity reflects that people still have a passion for minting NFTs, and the majority will do nothing after minting.
NFT Collection
There are now a total of 167,724 NFT collections on the Ethereum blockchain. Meanwhile, Ethereum NFT collections skyrocketed as the industry is getting widely adopted, despite the recent market turbulence in the crypto space. The active collection is stable and slowly increasing.
We can see from the above that the active collection is slowly increasing, most of them are mainly old collections, new collections accounted for the highest in February 2022, 50.6%, and then began to decline, and dropped to 26.1% in November 2022. The competition for issuers to enter the market is highly competitive, and branding and marketing ability is essential for the NFT creators.
As we can see from above, New collections have the majority of mints among all NFT Collections. The peak is in July 2022, the NFT market was popular and each collection could reach an average of 873 mints. However, with the increasing of NFT collections and due to the high competition in the market, the average new collection mints is gradually decreasing, at the end of November 2022, the average new collection mints dropped to 392.
2022 NFTs Showcase
Over the last year, the explosion of growth within the NFT industry has paved the way for numerous exciting NFT projects. Below, we have selected NFT projects with high activities this year, covering different categories of NFTs, exploring their innovative characteristics, and highlighting their activity volume
Sorare
Release Time: July 2019
Category: Sports
Activities: 101,265
Sorare is a football fantasy game where players buy, sell, trade, and manage a virtual team with digital player cards. Sorare is one of the most successful NFT games and allows players to make decisions and optimize their squad based on the real-life performance of professionals. Sorare introduced Global Cup 2022, a free-to-play football game that follows the most popular sporting event in the world and the NFTs are highly active, with a total activity of 101,265.
The Sandbox ASSETS
Release Time: November 2021
Category: Virtual Worlds
Activities: 254,303
The Sandbox is a community-driven platform where creators can monetize voxel assets and gaming experiences on the blockchain. The Sandbox metaverse comprises a map made up of 166,464 LANDS.
Unlike a traditional gaming environment, The Sandbox encourages gamers to design their own content and creations in the form of NFTs, which they can use to earn rewards and monetize, and in 2022, it has reached to a total activity of 254,303.
Wizards & Dragons Game
Release Time: December 2021
Category: Trading Cards
Activities: 192,695
Wizards and Dragons game is a strategy game that uses 100% on-chain NFTs with innovative game mechanics. The game consists of staking to earn to attract users.
Wizards and Dragons Game, a fork of Wolf Game, seems to be taking its place under the sun. A great success for the Wizards & Dragons project which has managed to erase the flaws of open-source code.
Adidas Metaverse
Release Time: December 2021
Category: Collectibles
Activities: 118,095
In tandem with Web3, Adidas has made its first NFT drop created with NFT pioneers Bored Ape Yacht Club, gmoney, and the team behind PUNKS comic.
Each NFT purchase guaranteed access to physical merchandise including a hoodie, tracksuit, and more, virtual wearables, and virtual event access in the Metaverse. It has a total activity of 118,095.
Decagon by Golid and Deca
Release Time: January 2022
Category: Art
Activities: 84,081
The Decagon is the infinitely evolving, always unique, and eternally open membership token of the Decaverse. Deca is a Generative NFT art platform that allows users to create and share NFT galleries as well as follow others on the platform.
What is really amazing about the creation of galleries in Deca is that users can choose to create a simple gallery to quickly and easily show off a collection of works or can choose to create a freestyle gallery allowing users to add custom backgrounds and text to tell a story in custom ways.
ChainFace Arena
Release Time: January 2022
Category: Trading Cards
Activities: 83,482
ChainFaces Arena is an Ethereum-based NFT project to add a gaming element at the collection’s core. Each ChainFaces Arena NFT allows the collector to try their might in a battle for a chance to get generative upgrades to their collectible. If a player loses a fight, the NFT will be burned and gone. As more players decide to try out their collectibles in the arena, ChainFaces Arena brings a revolutionary new mechanism for building scarcity and it is highly active in 2022 with 83,482 activities.
Augminted Labs Scientists
Release Time: March 2022
Category: Collectibles
Activities: 77,282
Augminted Labs Scientists are an uncapped supply NFT collection minted on the Ethereum blockchain that is fully customizable, from the name and all the way down to the traits. It is the most active NFT PFP project in 2022 with 77,282 activities.
Otherdeed for Otherside
Release Time: April 2022
Category: Virtual Worlds
Activities: 286,653
Like other virtual worlds, Otherdeed for Otherside aims to establish its foothold in the interconnected metaverse. To do so, users need to obtain Otherdeed NFTs, which are crucial to claiming land in the Otherside metaverse.
It is one of the utility use cases for ApeCoin and ties into BAYC/MAYC, along with other collections. The collection gained popularity during the launch as it offered ApeCoin holders much-needed utility, and it reached 286,653 activities in 2022.
VeeFriends Series 2
Release Time: April 2022
Category: Trading Cards
Activities: 107,239
Vee Friends S2 is part of the ‘Compete and Collect’ game, where players can compete against each other by flipping each other’s cards. The winner gets to keep the prize card of the opponent. Vee Friends aims to create a way to build a community around his creative and business passions via NFTs and it has reached 107,239 activities in 2022.
CryptoNinja Partners
Release Time: May 2022
Category: Collectibles
Activities: 77,374
CryptoNinja Partners (CNP) is a 22,222-issue NFT collection starring CryptoNinja sub-characters. The total volume has reached 3,000 ETH, and the number of holders has surpassed 4,700. CNP is also planning to participate in a card game, release a smartphone app, and collaborate with local governments.
The Merge: Regenesis
Release Time: September 2022
Category: Art
Activities: 385,488
Regenesis is a collection of art NFTs celebrating the historic technological milestone the Ethereum community just achieved. The commemorative NFT collection, Regenesis, holds one of the very few NFTs that were included on Block 1 of PoS Ethereum. This is a highly active NFT project in 2022 with 385,488 total activities.
Neymar Jr. — JungleVIBES
Release Time: October 2022
Category: Sports
Activities: 103,549
Neymar Jr. NFT is authorized by Brazilian superstar Neymar Jr. the company has signed an exclusive license agreement with Neymar Jr. for NFT Collections. Upon joining NFTSTAR, Neymar Jr. will work with NFTSTAR’s world-class to develop, sell, and trade NFT collectibles authorized by NR SPORT.
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