Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have been on a multi-year downward trend, with prices and volumes plummeting after OpenSea’s first XP crate distribution.
Legacy NFT collections such as “Bored Ape Yacht Club” and “Pudgy Penguins” have fallen more than 50% since the summer, when the market recovered after the launch of OpenSea’s chest farming system. However, after the first chest distribution, OpenSea NFT volume decreased by 48% compared to last week, and Blur’s NFT volume decreased by 60%.
The decrease in trading volume is reflected in asset prices. Bored Ape Yacht Club has fallen 26% over the past month to 6.55 ETH, or $24,000, its lowest price since 2021. Meanwhile, Pudgy Penguins has fallen 33% from last month to 6.65 ETH, and is down 80% from its all-time high in December, which was triggered by the launch of the PENGU token.
Azuki, another legacy NFT collection, reached a minimum price of over 35 ETH at its peak, but has retraced its entire lifecycle after minting at 1 ETH per NFT in 2022 and currently trades at 1.08 ETH. Amid mass liquidation of Blur loans, the collection even dropped below 1 ETH recently.
Major NFT Collection – Blur
New NFT collections like Hyperliquid’s Hypurrs have also been relentless, trading for $57,000 just two days ago, and $80,000 on the OTC market before launch, now trading at $950 HYPE, or $41,000.
Return after farm work
OpenSea ended its first chest farming campaign on October 17th, with users farming XP to earn chests. The chest was believed to contain valuable NFTs and points that could quantify future $SEA allocations.
But most farmers received pennies on the dollar for the fees they paid, received a new allocation of OpenSea Treasures (which will be subject to “meaningful consideration” at TGE), and those who won NFTs worth more than $10,000 were surprised to see a KYC form to claim their prize.
After the conclusion of the first chest farming season, OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer joined X to share statistics on OpenSea’s new focus on token trading.
“OpenSea had over $2.6 billion in trading volume this month, with more than 90% coming from token trades. This is just the beginning of the transformation from an ‘NFT marketplace’ to a ‘trade everything,’” Finzer said.
However, the volume of the OpenSea DEX aggregator has plummeted since the initial chest distribution. The platform generated a record trading volume of $462 million on October 15, but has only processed between $3 million and $8 million each day since then.
OpenSea DEX Aggregator Volume – DeFiLlama