Each has its own market, data explains the battle between NFT exchanges

Author: Jessica

On August 19, after weighing the gains and losses, OpenSea announced that it would stop supporting BNBChain because the support costs have exceeded the returns.

This decision was made when OpenSea added support for L2 such as Base and Zora, and some people are wondering whether BNB Chain is going to die. But in fact, it’s not BNB Chian that’s cool, but OpenSea, which relies on NFT to make a living.

From a data perspective, the cryptocurrency market is now in a deep bear, and NFT is experiencing a broader decline.

According to DappRader data, in August, NFT transaction volume fell by 16% to $559 million, and the number of transactions fell by 13% to 3.2 million.

Secondly, let’s take a look at OpenSea’s revenue, which mainly comes from the 2.5% transaction fee. January 2022 is also its peak. OpenSea’s monthly transaction volume reached US$4.8 billion, which brought OpenSea US$120 million. Monthly gross profit. In February 2023, the monthly transaction volume shrank to US$657 million, and the gross profit was as low as US$16.43 million per month. However, in August 2023, the monthly transaction volume was only US$105 million, and the gross profit was also low. to US$2.63 million/month.

NFT transaction volume has dropped significantly, and to make matters worse, OpenSea's market share is also decreasing.

Revenue and market share have dropped significantly, which makes it really difficult to support more ecological NFTs. In addition, it is also related to the decline in the share of OpenSea in the BNB Chain chain.

Judging from the statistical data from 2022 to July 2023, Ethereum almost accounts for most of the transaction volume on Opensea, and BNB Chain only accounted for 0.8% at its peak (2022/11).

On August 18, OpenSea announced changes to creator royalties, canceling permanent royalties, and adding 2.5%-10% optional royalties in secondary sales. Some community users believe that this move harms artists’ ongoing income, Yuga Labs announced , in light of the mandatory royalty retirement announced by OpenSea, which will implement an optional creator royalty program for all NFT secondary sales after February 2024, Yuga Labs will gradually stop supporting all upgradeable contracts and new series of OpenSea SeaPort, It is planned to be completed in February 2024 at the same time as OpenSea.

The cancellation of royalties also illustrates OpenSea's plight. After all, Blur is replacing him as the boss, which has led to OpenSea's efforts to reduce royalty protection to remain competitive.

On the other hand, OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer said that this change is a step towards increasing innovation and adaptability. Furthermore, he acknowledged the limitations of previous model executions and encouraged creators to try alternative strategies. This perspective strives to foster diverse revenue streams and creative possibilities.

Furthermore, this initiative stimulates the emergence of creator-centric platforms and ecosystems that build their own marketplaces to protect creators’ rights.

A typical example is Art Blocks, which is the cornerstone of NFT-generated art. It launched its own secondary market as early as March this year. After OpenSea’s announcement, Art Blocks reiterated its intention to protect creators’ rights through its own NFT market. Promise of.

Unlike Yuga Labs, whose collection is primarily traded on Blur, the majority of Art Blocks’ collectors continue to trade on OpenSea. As of August 21, Art Blocks’ 30-day trading volume reached $5.32 million, a large portion of which occurred on OpenSea. Therefore, the possibility of Art Blocks exiting OpenSea will indeed impact the platform’s revenue. This effect has become especially significant given the growing popularity of NFT-generated art.

OpenSea’s decision to remove royalty enforcement means the loss of another major NFT market that advocates for creators. This change could spark a trend of more projects choosing to create their own marketplaces. After Yuga Labs announced their exit, it's not hard to imagine that they might soon start the process of launching the product into the market.

This also illustrates some subtle changes in the NFT market, with the rise of "low-threshold" NFTs. These assets have a smaller individual value but can attract a wider audience, which may affect the overall indicators of the market.

OpenSea does not support BNB Chain, but BNB Chain still occupies a leading position in terms of activity. In the past month, it had 500,456 dUAW (daily independent active addresses), accounting for 24% of the market share.

Among the DApps active on BNB Chain, the top three in the past month are TinyTap, LifeForm, and PancakeSwap. The first two are Social-related, which also shows that Social and Games-related assets are growing in the NFT market.

In addition, BNB Chain itself has native NFT exchanges, such as Binance NFT Marketplace. BinanceLabs has also strategically invested in NFTrade and Tabi (formerly TreasureLand). Tofu has occupied BNB Chain’s NFT exchange list for a period of time, and OpenSea Nothing good can be gained from it.

Another small detail is that Binance NFT will no longer support the Polygon network on September 26. After streamlining, it will focus on supporting BNB Chain, Ethereum and Bitcoin.

This move will give opportunities to the Polygon ecosystem’s native NFT exchange.

Some people believe that the current situation of "stopping support" for NFT indicates that the NFT market is "dying". After all, the cryptocurrency market itself is very small. When the bottom layer is working towards interoperability and interoperability, NFT is setting up barriers. It embarrasses traders, but some people hold different views, indicating that the NFT market is gradually segmented. After all, NFTs on different chains do not have the need and significance of "cross-chain".