NFT
NFT Trading Volume Falls 90% From Peak but On-Chain Activity Tells a More Complicated Story
By almost every headline metric, the NFT market looks like a cautionary tale: monthly trading volume on Ethereum peaked near $5 billion in January 2022 and sat below $400 million for most of 2025. Floor prices for the collections that dominated the 2021 cycle, from Bored Ape Yacht Club to CryptoPunks, have fallen 80-95% from … Continued
Key takeaways
- DappRadar’s Q1 2025 industry report recorded a 35% year-on-year decline in NFT trading volume but only a 12% decline in unique active wallets.
- The NFT marketplace landscape reshaped itself between 2022 and 2024 in ways that affected both volume and seller revenue.
- Ethereum still dominates high-value NFT trading, but the NFT activity distribution across chains has diversified substantially since 2021.
- The floor price for Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), the collection that most defined the 2021 NFT cycle, fell from a peak of around 150 ETH in April 2022 to under 10 ETH in early 2025.
- The NFT market effectively did not exist before 2020, so there is limited historical precedent.
By almost every headline metric, the NFT market looks like a cautionary tale: monthly trading volume on Ethereum peaked near $5 billion in January 2022 and sat below $400 million for most of 2025. Floor prices for the collections that dominated the 2021 cycle, from Bored Ape Yacht Club to CryptoPunks, have fallen 80-95% from their highs in dollar terms. But the same on-chain data that shows those declines also shows something the headlines miss: the number of unique active NFT wallets has not collapsed at the same rate, and the types of activity have shifted significantly.
Analysis of NFT market data. Past performance of NFT prices is not indicative of future results. This is not financial advice. NFTs can lose all their value.
Volume Collapse vs. Wallet Activity: Two Different Stories
DappRadar’s Q1 2025 industry report recorded a 35% year-on-year decline in NFT trading volume but only a 12% decline in unique active wallets. The divergence reflects a structural change: the high-volume era was driven by a small number of whale wallets trading high-floor-price collections as speculative assets. The lower-volume era reflects a broader but less financially intense user base engaging with NFTs as collectibles, gaming items, tickets, or access credentials rather than flipped investments. See the full DappRadar Q1 2025 report for methodology and chain-by-chain breakdowns.
Nansen’s wallet-labelling data, available on the Nansen NFT dashboard, shows that the proportion of wallets holding NFTs longer than 90 days before selling has risen since 2022. In other words, fewer people are trading NFTs as short-term speculation, but more are holding them for reasons other than immediate resale. Whether that represents conviction or illiquidity is a reasonable debate, and the answer probably differs by collection.
The Marketplace Wars and Their Market Effects
The NFT marketplace landscape reshaped itself between 2022 and 2024 in ways that affected both volume and seller revenue. Blur, a marketplace launched in late 2022 that targeted professional traders rather than collectors, captured the majority of Ethereum NFT volume within months of launch by offering faster order books and rewarding traders with its own BLUR token. OpenSea, which had commanded near-monopoly share during the 2021 peak, saw its market share fall below 20% in dollar terms by 2024.
The competitive dynamic produced a race to zero on creator royalties. Blur initially made royalties optional for buyers (effectively eliminating them in competitive markets), which forced OpenSea to follow with its own optional-royalties policy. Creators who had built businesses expecting 5-10% royalties on every secondary sale saw that revenue stream largely disappear. The royalties issue remains unresolved at the protocol level on Ethereum and is one of the drivers behind creator migration to other chains. See our NFT category for coverage of ongoing marketplace developments and royalty policy changes.
Where the On-Chain Activity Has Moved
Ethereum still dominates high-value NFT trading, but the NFT activity distribution across chains has diversified substantially since 2021. Bitcoin Ordinals, which launched in January 2023 and allow arbitrary data to be inscribed on individual satoshis, generated over $400 million in volume in their first six months and introduced a new class of NFT collector who had previously been Bitcoin-only. Flow, Solana, and several layer-2 networks have developed active gaming-NFT ecosystems where the average transaction value is much lower but the transaction count is higher than Ethereum’s high-value collections. The Ethereum ecosystem still carries the blue-chip collections but no longer accounts for the majority of NFT transactions by count.
The Blue-Chip Floor: What Happened and Why It Matters
The floor price for Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), the collection that most defined the 2021 NFT cycle, fell from a peak of around 150 ETH in April 2022 to under 10 ETH in early 2025. In dollar terms the decline is even sharper because ETH itself fell during the same period before recovering. The collection remains the most recognised NFT brand by name, but its floor liquidity (the number of buyers willing to purchase at or above the floor) has thinned significantly, which means the quoted floor price is more fragile than it appears. Yuga Labs, the company behind BAYC, has made several strategic pivots including the launch and then restructuring of their Otherside metaverse project.
The decline matters beyond BAYC holders for two reasons. First, high floor prices in 2021 attracted institutional and celebrity attention that created media coverage and retail demand; low floor prices make that attention less likely to return at the same scale. Second, collections with thin liquidity at the floor are especially vulnerable to rapid price movements when a large holder decides to sell, creating a further self-fulfilling decline in confidence.
Frequently Asked Questions
Have NFT markets ever recovered from a downturn before?
The NFT market effectively did not exist before 2020, so there is limited historical precedent. CryptoPunks and CryptoKitties saw interest drop off significantly after their respective launch cycles before recovering partially in subsequent bull markets. Whether the 2021 peak-era collections experience a similar recovery depends on demand drivers that did not exist in prior cycles: institutional rights, gaming integration, and community utility that extends beyond speculation.
Are NFTs still being created and sold?
Yes, at significant volume. The decline is in dollar trading volume for speculative resale, not in minting or utility-driven use. Gaming platforms, ticketing systems, digital art marketplaces, and sports collectible platforms all continue to issue and sell NFTs. The activity is less concentrated and less visible than the 2021 cycle but broader in terms of use cases.
What is the relationship between NFT prices and crypto prices generally?
High positive correlation during bull markets, as speculation in NFTs requires capital that is more readily available when crypto portfolios are appreciating. During bear markets, NFT liquidity tends to dry up faster than spot crypto liquidity because the markets are thinner and there is no short-selling mechanism to maintain two-sided markets. ETH price is a rough leading indicator for the highest-value Ethereum-based collections.
Sources
- DappRadar Industry Report Q1 2025 — volume, wallet activity, and cross-chain breakdown
- Nansen NFT Trends Dashboard — smart-money wallet behaviour and holding-period analysis