NFT Weekend Recap & OpenSea Dominance

AUG 02, 2021 • 3 Min Read

Jeremy Ong + 3 others Nick PappageorgeJayden AndrewJoo Kian Jeremy Ong
Disclosure: Delphi Ventures and members of our team may own positions in assets mentioned in this re

Market Update

NFTs (and specifically CryptoPunks) enjoyed a fantastic run over the weekend. During the Asia open, BTC takes a breather while consolidating below $40,000 as ETH/BTC wakes up from its multi-week slumber.

CryptoPunks Went On A Tear

Art Blocks, BAYC & Punks See Increased Adoption

  • In terms of the number of holders, Art Blocks & Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC) holders have more than doubled since early May. Art Blocks’ larger supply and BAYC’s relative affordability (versus Crypto Punks) have been a catalyst for adoption. However, it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison between the 3 projects: BAYC and CryptoPunk have a fixed supply of 10k pieces, whereas Art Blocks has an expanding supply of around 76k at the time of writing.
  • CryptoPunks remain an exclusive project held by few. Since May, CryptoPunks only increased its total holders by 500 (or 27%) in the last 3 months. Over the same period, Art Blocks and BAYC holders have grown 114% and 137%, respectively.

OpenSea – The Go-To NFT Marketplace

  • For a brief period back in October 2020, Rarible was the market leader in the issuer-agnostic NFT marketplace sector. Its steady decline over time can be attributed to trade mining incentives (which led to a lot of wash trading for mining RARI tokens). Remember, organic traction is always better than incentive-driven traction. Another reason would likely be OpenSea’s open & permissionless nature as compared to closed marketplaces (a much more curated process) like SuperRare.
  • OpenSea extends its market share lead at the expense of, well, almost every other NFT marketplace despite not having a token. This further cements OpenSea’s position as the market leader for NFT marketplaces with no signs of slowing down (more on that in the next chart).

OpenSea volume surges past

  • As NFT buying soared over the weekend, OpenSea processed a record $57.3M in daily volume. In addition, July was OpenSea highest monthly volume ever, with over $250M in volume. It’s worth noting that even with these stellar numbers and a 96% market share, this does not represent the entire NFT market as it does not include volume projects with their own marketplaces like Larvalabs (Punks, Meebits and Autoglyphs) and Axie Infinity.
  • Arguably, OpenSea has developed the strongest network effect in the space, as evidenced by its surging volume and market share.

Notable Tweets

Cultural capital

Flight to NFT quality

A guide to Parallel drops

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Jeremy Ong + 3 others Nick PappageorgeJayden AndrewJoo Kian Jeremy Ong