The NFT explosion is one of the most talked about events for crypto in 2021, with sales from several platforms breaking records on a weekly basis.
NFTs had their best month ever in February, according to a report by DApp statistics trackers at DappRadar. Sales volume from the top three platforms grew to $342 million in February, up almost 400% from the $71 million recorded the month before.
Sports memorabilia platform NBA Top Shot dominated the sector and is now responsible for 67% of total NFT transaction volume. The other NFT DApps in the top three are OpenSea, a general crypto collectibles market and CryptoPunks, an Ethereum-based collectibles series. CryptoPunks generated all-time high sales of $79M with the floor price of punks increasing from $10,000 to an average of $32,000.
The DappRadar report also mentioned the tremendous rise in the popularity of generative art, which is art created at least in part by autonomous systems.
High gas fees on the Ethereum network saw several DeFi and NFT projects move off the platform in February, in favor of those with less costly transactions. Binance Chain recently surpassed Ethereum in terms of transaction volume and unique active wallet count and the report noted the rapid growth of several copycat NFT projects on Binance Chain, such as Binance Punks and Bashmarks.
Despite high gas fees, statistics from CryptoSlam show that seven of last month’s top 10 best-selling NFT products are still hosted on Ethereum. NBA Top Shot uses the Flow blockchain and the remaining two arehosted on WAX.
The fastest rising brand among the top 10 is CryptoKitties, which saw a resurgence in popularity as month-over-month sales increased over 1,300%. The newest entrant to place in CryptoSlam’s top 10 sales list is Capcom’s Street Fighter II series, which is currently #8, with $1.26 M in sales since its Feb. 16 launch.