Move over Ethereum: side chains and Layer 1 competitors emerge to provide the NFT market a decentralized foundation to support exponential growth.

Global sales of NFTs reached US$18.5 billion in 2021, which was 570 times higher than the previous year, according to a joint report published by Forkast and CryptoSlam in the Q1 2022 “State of the NFT Market”. The study provides comprehensive insights into the latest data and charts the exponential growth of the industry, including forward-looking key developments.

According to the leading NFT data aggregator CryptoSlam, there were 759,145 unique sellers of NFTs in January 2022 compared to 27,963 in January 2021, an increase of 27 times. Other insights include the fact that Ethereum was no longer the dominant blockchain when it came to the number of sellers and slipped to the third spot with a seller count of 580,000 by end of February 2022, behind Ronin and WAX.

“This report is one of the most definitive overviews of the NFT landscape to date, portraying a truly global story. This is an extremely useful resource for anyone seeking to build in the open metaverse,” said Yat Siu, co-founder and chairman at Animoca Brands, a Hong Kong-based game software company that recently raised over US$358 million, giving it a valuation of over US$5 billion.

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NFTs have paved the way for niche products, including virtual property ownership. Property prices on Decentraland, one of the popular metaverses, have risen 400-500% since Facebook rebranded as Meta, announcing its interest in the metaverse.

“It’s really interesting to see the rising popularity of NFTs in Asia especially, which offers huge opportunities for accelerating mass adoption of blockchain technology,” said Angie Lau, founder and editor-in-chief at Forkast.

For millions of users who are beginning to move to Web3.0 through digital collectibles, NFTs serve as the bridge. New use cases outlined in the report have the potential to disrupt traditional industries such as music, art, ticketing and even education.

“With greater adoption of NFTs, we will see more innovative use cases and maturing of the asset class. There are challenges ahead including fakes, spams and bubbles, but NFTs remain the best digital proof of ownership and are here to stay,” said Randy Wasinger, founder and CEO of CryptoSlam.

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Report Topics

• NFT Market By the Numbers
• Blockchains and NFTs
• The Rise and Rise of NFTs
• NFT Avatars
• Trends
• Asia Primed for NFTs Growth
• The Metaverse
• Art
• NFT Hacks and Scams
• Regulations
• Decoupling of NFTs from Cryptocurrencies
• Brands
• Collectibles
• Blockchain Gaming
• Use Cases
• Virtual Real Estate
• NFT Marketplaces
• The Tech Behind NFTs
• Fund Raising
• Growth Forecast