ERC-721 Token Transfers on Ethereum Surge to Nearly 10 Million as NFT Sales Hits $10.7B in Q3

Whenever it looks like non-fungible tokens (NFT) mania is starting to slow down, the trend gains traction and starts moving towards new highs yet again.

This growing interest in NFT has seen their sales surging to $10.7 billion in Q3, representing an outstanding 704% increase from the previous quarter and a 38,060% increase year-over-year, according to a Dapp Radar report.

In the last two months, the NFT market had an explosion with August’s record-breaking trading volume of $5.2 billion.

While renowned celebrities like Snoop Dogg, Shaquille O’Neal, and Steve Aoki and top fashion brands like Gucci, D&G, and Burberry are the latest members of NFT space, blue-chip NFT projects like CryptoPunks or the Bored Ape Yacht Club continue to propel it into the mainstream.

NFT marketplace OpenSea meanwhile continues to be the economic center of this meteoric rise. 3.8 million NFT purchases on OpenSea in Q3 have beaten Q1 and Q2 by a huge margin which recorded 193k and 357k purchases, respectively.

Its number of unique daily buyers averaged 17.4K in Q3, an 815% increase over the 1.9K unique daily buyers in the previous quarter.

5/ @OpenSea volume hit a local maximum at the end of August. Transaction volume and count started reverting higher over the back half of September.

The daily transaction count on OpenSea hit an all-time high of nearly 90k txs yesterday. pic.twitter.com/UWm14l1nqd

— Delphi Digital (@Delphi_Digital) October 5, 2021

NFT games continued to capture people’s interest and generated $2.3 billion in trading volume, representing 22% of the total NFT volume.

Coming into Q4, Google search interest for “NFT” is slowing down, which could be due to heightened fees on Ethereum “but with Twitter previewing NFT profile verification for its 26 million daily active users, NFTs could see yet another surge in Q4,” states Coin Metrics.

While other blockchains like Solana (SOL) and Tezos (XTZ) are also joining the NFT movement, Ethereum is dominating the space. In Q3, there were a total of 9.88 million transfers of ERC-721 tokens on Ethereum, an increase of 305% over the 2.44 million in Q2. SOL -12.06% Solana / USD SOLUSD $ 15.50
-$1.87-12.06% Volume 1.24 b Change -$1.87 Open $15.50 Circulating 398.32 m Market Cap 6.17 b 1 y Coinbase Predicts Substantial Growth of Newer L1 Chains & Institutionalization of Regulated DeFi 1 y Bitcoin and Ether Dump More Going Into Year-End, ETH Killers Showing Great Momentum 1 y Bitcoin and Ether Breaks Trend With Outflows While Altcoins Continue to See Inflows XTZ -12.42% Tezos / USD XTZUSD $ 0.72
-$0.09-12.42% Volume 30.96 m Change -$0.09 Open $0.72 Circulating 941.08 m Market Cap 681.74 m 1 y Ubisoft’s “Building Block” For Its Metaverse Is Through In-Game NFTs In Partnership with Tezos (XTZ) 1 y Coinbase Cloud wanting to be the “AWS of Crypto,” Amasses $30 Billion in Staked Assets 1 y NFT Mania: Adidas Buys a Bored Ape, Animoca Brands Partner with BSC, Blockchain.com to Make NFT as Accessible as Crypto

The success of NFT has been a boon for ETH adoption with the long-anticipated fee burn mechanism implemented to Ethereum amidst the backdrop of JPEG summer. More than 406k ETH worth $1.35 billion were burnt during Q3.

With these ETH burns, daily net ETH issuance has come down, and there have been three such days so far that had negative (deflationary) issuance.

ETH’s annual inflation rate was about 4% in the months just before EIP-1559, with an average of 13.5K issued daily. Since the EIP 1559 launch, the annual inflation halved to about 2%, with daily issuance averaging 6.4K.