The NFT sector seems to be recovering as the broader crypto market sentiment improves.
New players and changing dynamics have led to a fast-paced evolution of the non-fungible token space. Despite a hectic start, NFTs had a strong Q1 in 2023.
NFT Market Recap: Q1 2023
DappRadar’s report shows an impressive start for the NFT market in 2023, with Q1 being the best quarter since Q2 2022. While turbulent market conditions caused a 15.65% decline in NFT trading volume in March, the overall performance remained bullish. Let’s examine the key highlights of the NFT market in Q1.
The trading volume for Q1 increased by 137%, reaching a total value of $4.7 billion. The figure in February was boosted by the Blur token farming period, while the NFT sales count for the following month only dropped by 4.63% in March, with 2.7 million NFTs sold.
NFT sales accounted for 19.4 million in Q1 2023, a rise of 8.56% from the previous quarter of 2022.
Regarding blockchains, Ethereum dominated the NFT market in March, accounting for nearly 90% of the market share. Its quarterly trading volume surged by more than 245% to $4.1 billion in Q1 2023, compared to Q4 2022.
Solana was behind Ethereum, with a trading volume of $242 million. The layer 1 blockchain saw an increase of 4.55% since the previous quarter.
Polygon had an excellent start to the year, with trading volume surpassing $29 million in March, despite a 24.20% decrease from the previous month. Moreover, with quarterly data, the layer 2 scaling solution had a trading volume of $85 million in Q1 2023, a rise of 125.04% from the previous quarter, making it one of the best three-month periods recorded since Q4 2021.
Highlight: Blur Vs. OpenSea
OpenSea has long been the dominant NFT marketplace. The emergence of Blur, however, posed a strong challenge to the once-undisputed market leader. The report showed that Blur dominated the NFT market in Q1 2023, recording a trading volume of $2.7 billion, a remarkable increase of 783.89% from Q4 2022, and a market dominance of over 57%.
Though Blur experienced a decline in trading volume by 6.56% to $1.2 billion, the platform still maintained more than 70% dominance over the market.
After facing stiff competition from Blur, OpenSea’s market share hit the smallest figure since February 2021, with just 22% in March. In terms of Q1 2023, the marketplace showed an increase of 68.41% with a trading volume of $1.4 billion. Its quarterly market dominance stood at 31.10%.
