27 Stats About NFTs from 2022

Dec. 2022

Data source: Footprint Analytics — Stats About NFTs from 2022

At the beginning of the year, when the crypto market was red hot, it was extremely tough to understand what was going on in the NFT industry.

The massive influx of collections, new marketplaces, and easy money in the space created the perfect mix of incentives for fraudulent activity.

As we now know, thanks to Footprint’s wash trading filters, several “OpenSea killers” were built entirely on fake activity, and not everything was as it seemed when you looked at NFT collection leaderboards. As the market crashed, so did activity across the board (both fake and organic).

But not all was negative. Several highly innovative NFT collections broke the mold of zany PFP images and proved a market for digital, non-fungible art existed.

While there was a proliferation of small collections and grassroots community-building in some corners of the industry (e.g., Solana and Magic Eden), the year also saw consolidation with the birth of the first NFT megacorp in Yuga Labs.

Instead of telling you what to think about 2022 and where the NFT world is heading in 2023, this article has the essential stats from last year so you can create your own analysis.

8 Stats about the NFT Industry

Total sales of NFTs in 2022 was $55.5B

This is up 175% from $20.2B in 2021.

Reference: Yearly Volume of NFT Marketplaces

2. The market capitalization of the NFT industry peaked on April 4th at $41.5B

Market capitalization is calculated as the sum of each NFT valued at the greater of its last traded price and the floor price of the collection, respectively. Suspected wash trades have been filtered out.

Reference: 2022 Market Cap and Trading Volume

3. Roughly 85K NFT collections were launched last year

In 2021, there were around 14.5K collections, while the number nearly reached 99K by the end of 2022.

Reference: Total Number of Market Collections 2021 vs Total Number of Market Collections 2022

4. About 7,700 collections had trading volume over $100K

But note that the majority of this activity did not come from legitimate, organic interest in the project.

Reference: Top Collections 2022

5. Only 2,623 collections had more than 1000 unique buyers

As with all stats in the NFT industry, this one should be taken with a grain of salt due to the significant amount of wash trading, especially during the first half of the year.

Reference: Top Collections 2022

6. NFT trading volume reached its 2022 peak in January, with $17.4B in value

This was more than a 4x jump from the previous month (December, 2021). This was also the month when Google searches for the keyword “NFT” reached their ATH.

Reference: Trading Value (V)

7. The biggest gap between the number of sellers and buyers was in January, with about 200K more sellers than there were buyers.

Yet January was also the hottest month for NFT prices for most major collections, indicating that using this metrics as an analog for supply and demand has its flaws.

Reference: NFT Buyers vs. Sellers

8. Last year, 46% of total NFT trading volume was likely to be caused by wash trading

Footprint Analytics uses a number of indicators and filters to detect suspicious activity. Click here to find out more.

Reference: NFT Volume by Chain (With Wash Trading Filtered) vs. NFT Volume By Chain

7 Stats about NFT Collections

The collection with the largest market cap by the end of the year was CryptoPunks at $1.1B

Crypto Punks, which was launched by Larva Labs in 2017, was the first NFT collection to become a household name and have the highest floor price in the industry. The IP of the collection was acquired by Yuga Labs in March, 2022.

Reference: 2022: Top Collections by Market Cap

2. Trading volume of major collections in the Yugaverse — Yuga Labs’ portfolio of products — was $3.1B

This sum includes Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Bored Ape Kennel Club, Otherside, and CryptoPunks. It excludes Meebits, which had more trading volume than all of these combined,

Reference: Yuga Labs (Trading Volume in 2022)

3. Yuga Labs’ portfolio accounts for about 20% of the total market cap of the entire NFT industry

This sum includes Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Bored Ape Kennel Club, Otherside, CryptoPunks and Meebits.

4. Without any wash trade filtering, Terraforms by Mathcastles had an astounding $12B in trading volume, more than any other collection, across 11,341 transactions

However, 99.8% of the volume and 46.3% of transactions were detected to be wash trading.

Reference: NFT — Collections

5. When filtering out wash trading, CryptoPunks had the highest volume ($2.9B) followed by Bored Ape Yacht Club ($2.3B)

Reference: 2022: Top Collections by volume

6. ArtBlocks Curated was the 4th most traded collection by volume and amassed a market cap $325M

ArtBlocks demonstrated that there is a market for high-end artistic NFTs — it stands out among Yuga PFP projects and metaverse land NFTs at the top of the rankings

7. There were 7 major collections whose volume was over 95% wash trading

For this stat, “major” is defined as having over $1M in real trading volume. There are Terraforms by Mathcastles, More Loot, dotdotdots, Dreadfulz, Audioglyphs, CryptoPhunksV2, and Meebits.

6 Stats about Chains and Markets for NFT Projects

Ethereum had 95% percent of volume, 47% of transactions, and 71% of protocols

These figures are almost the exact same as in 2021.

Reference: 2022 Market Share of Transactions by Chain and Yearly Number of NFT Protocols by Chain

2. Solana went from having no NFT protocols in 2021 to 5,196 in 2022

Reference: Yearly Number of NFT Protocols by Chain

3. OpenSea hosted 53% of all total collections

OpenSea remained the marketplace of choice for Ethereum and Polygon. However, Magic Eden capitalized on its Solana first mover advantage to be the marketplace of choice for collections on this chain (OpenSea started listing them in April.) Note: a collection can list on multiple marketplaces.

Reference: 2022: Number of Marketplace Collections by Chain

4. Solana had more active users in October, with 411K, than Ethereum, with 392K

While most of the blue chip collections and collectors transact on OpenSea and Ethereum, Solana built up a sizable community of NFT enthusiasts in 2022. Solana’s active users hovered between 20–45% of the total market share — October was the only month it overtook Ethereum for this metric

Reference: Chain Monthly Active User

5. OpenSea had 96,459 unique wallets make a transaction on the protocol on Feb. 2

This is more transactions than any other marketplace on any other day, ever.

Reference: 2022 Marketplace Daily Active User

6. Over $903M in platform fees were generated on OpenSea

This made OpenSea the most profitable marketplace in terms of fees generated from trading

Reference: Top Marketplaces

6 Stats about NFT Investment & Fundraising

The NFT industry received a total of $2.98B in fundraising in 2022

Reference: NFT investment Amount in 2022

2. Animoca Brands closed the largest round of the year, $358M led by Liberty City Ventures

Animoca has said it will use the funding for strategic acquisitions, investments, develop its games and metaverse products, and acquire licenses for popular intellectual properties.

Reference: 2022 NFT Fundraising Details

3. There were 1,992 total fundraising rounds in 2022, 756 more than in 2021

Reference: Investment by Category in 2022

4. While NFT-related projects were the most popular category among VCs by the number of rounds, they were the 2nd-least popular in 2022

In 2022, general Web3 projects closed the most rounds (711), followed by DeFi (362), infrastructure (331), NFTs (326), and, finally, CeFi (257).

Reference: Investment by Category in 2022

5. Seed rounds made up 81% of total NFT funding rounds

Reference: NFTs Funding Rounds

6. The 2 largest rounds for pure NFT projects went to OpenSea ($300M) and Dapper Labs ($250M)

The OpenSea round was one of only 5 Series C or D rounds in 2022. Dapper Labs is the studio behind the NBA Top Shot collection.

This piece is contributed by Footprint Analytics community.

The Footprint Community is a place where data and crypto enthusiasts worldwide help each other understand and gain insights about Web3, the metaverse, DeFi, GameFi, or any other area of the fledgling world of blockchain. Here you’ll find active, diverse voices supporting each other and driving the community forward.

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