NFT Frenzy Sees Sales Top $10B for Q3 While AXS Hits Another ATH

More than $10.7 billion worth of NFTs were sold between July and September, according to stats from analytics websites.

Digital art, memes, gaming items, and collectibles have sold like hotcakes over the past three months, so much so that they’ve even headlined on Reuters.

The report, citing figures from DappRadar, stated that the whopping third-quarter figure was up from $1.3 billion in Q2 and $1.2 billion in Q1. The figures could be even higher as they don’t include off-chain transactions such as those carried out by auction houses.

NonFungible, which tracks NFTs only on the Ethereum blockchain, puts the 2021 total volume at $7 billion.

OpenSea and Axies Lead the Way

NFT marketplace OpenSea has been dominating in terms of trade volumes. Since most NFTs are based on the Ethereum ERC-721 standard, they have also been responsible for record transaction fees in recent months.

Etherscan reports that the platform is the highest generator of gas on Ethereum, with 22.5% of the entire share for the past 24 hours. It had generated 2,189 ETH or $7.3 million in network fees since the same time yesterday. In fact, OpenSea churns through more gas than Uniswap and Tether combined.

DappRadar is currently reporting that OpenSea has handled $2.75 billion in NFT sales over the past 30 days.

More than half of NFTs sold during the period were between $101 and $1,000, and around 20% were in the $1,001 to $10,000 bracket, according to NonFungible.

U.S.-based NFT project selling algorithmically-generated digital artworks called Art Blocks saw impressive growth for the quarter. However, the Axie Infinity “play-to-earn” metaverse has been the largest seller of NFTs to date, with more than $2.2 billion sold, according to CryptoSlam.

There are currently around 2 million Axie owners, the NFT ranking website reported. Axie Infinity had $776 million in Q3 revenues, according to DappRadar.

NFT Fever Drives AXS to ATH

The gaming platform launched staking incentives for its native AXS tokens last week, which resulted in a price surge to an all-time high of $156 on Oct. 4.

At the time of writing, AXS was trading at $137, up 115% over the past seven days and a whopping 825% over the past three months, according to CoinGecko.